


Strange What Desire

by Rydain



Series: As the Chips Fall [2]
Category: The Sexy Brutale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Erotica, Feel-good, Humor, M/M, No Spoilers, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rydain/pseuds/Rydain
Summary: Greyson seeks to snap the chains of his prison record as a respected security expert. Redd dreams of his long sought break into the upper echelon of the Casino Brutale. Both burn to put their skilled hands to better use - more so than just on the job.





	1. A Smooth Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Contemporary AU, more Gatsby than gameverse - plays fast and loose with details that don't fit into my worldbuilding. Either a possible precursor to canon or merrily divergent, depending on your sense of the game's era, Greyson and Redd's relationship, and how many spoilers you prefer to hang over everyone's heads.

Greyson gave a sharp exhale of nerves as he turned off the main road toward the manor house ahead. Two hours and change northeast from London had passed smoothly in his sleek grey electric, swift as a bullet and silent as his stocking feet. Cost a bomb, yes, but a man had to have his select luxuries, and at least it did save him on petrol. It had calmed him, too, with that easy ride and a chill mix of downtempo for the journey. The approaching bulwark of a mansion caught Greyson's breath in his throat. On his last visit to a place like this, he had been hauled out in handcuffs.

Greyson rolled up into the circular driveway like he was an old friend to this Sexy Brutale, as it was alluringly named - its vast wings, its clock tower, its sprawling garden of which he had caught a peek from the road. He took it all in with a discreet scan of the eye although he was alone and unwatched. Staring was for the rumpled rubes trundling out of the tour van in front of him, not for men of distinction such as himself. Men with waistcoats and bow ties and cultivated beards, all of which Greyson neatened before leaving the car.

A valet greeted Greyson and ushered him inside with a brief burst of radio communication. Greyson expected an introduction to this Lucas Bondes, this distant link in the chain of trust that had previously found him less authorized uses for his keen eye, his swift and practiced hands, his collection of custom lockpicks. Instead a pinstriped brick shithouse came tramping into the foyer, all square shaved head and beady glare beneath a prominent brow.

Greyson puffed his chest with a slight rock up onto the balls of his feet. He flicked out a business card, started up the old spiel with that moniker he had finally started to see as more characteristic than redundant. "Greyson Grayson's the name. So nice I say it twi-"

"Save it. I know who you are." Brick Shithouse jerked his head. "Follow me."

* * *

Clay - as the Casino Brutale's head of security tersely introduced himself - led Greyson through a great hall of marble where the tourists were milling around with their jaws just about dragging on the inlaid floor. Greyson had to fight to keep his own trap shut and eyes forward as he followed closely as instructed. The curtains were red velvet, the round area rugs thickly tufted, the pillars chased in gilded carvings. The rear wall, a melange of clear glass panes and intricate colored detail, looked out into a deep green and blooming conservatory.

"Must be nice to work in a posh place like this."

Clay grunted.

"That stained glass is something else. Never saw designs that fancy outside a cathedral, not that I'm going to heaven." Greyson laughed. "Or religious enough to care."

Silence.

"Neat little conservatory, it looks like - I wonder if it's got any rarities. Ever go in there? Stop and smell the flowers and all?"

A pointed look over the shoulder. "Ever think to keep the peace for once?"

Third time was indeed the charm, the underscore to the growing sense that Clay was to talk and Greyson to listen - not that he had much to listen to. Other jobs for his fledgling consultancy had involved a contract, a scope, a budget for plugging any holes he found. For this, he had received a vague directive to go bonkers and a fat enough advance that he figured the specifics could all be sorted out as needed. Greyson had thought to begin by picking Clay's brain. At the moment, this was looking more like a fruitless scramble at an empty safe.

They walked down a hall past a tantalizing glimpse of the casino entrance, flanked by twin statues of a man in a long feathered coat and Carnival mask beaked like a bird of prey. Lucas, as Clay unsurprisingly stated before Greyson had a chance to ask. Greyson wondered what was bigger - Lucas' pocketbook or his ego - to call for such decor. He decided they must be equally enormous, twin moons within the gravitational field of this sprawling place - perhaps also two halves of a giant arse.

Clay stopped at a door. "This room right here? My house. My rules. No quick movements. Hands where I can see them." A brusque unlocking with a thick ring of keys. "And for fuck's sake, don't touch anything."

Greyson took his hands out of his pockets where he had reflexively stashed them, as if this cave even had anything worth getting them on. A bank of grainy black and white monitors - the same poxy tube type as in any old cubby of a convenience store - and their associated stack of tape recorders. A folding table with an open book of crossword puzzles, a half eaten sandwich, a scattering of crumbs. An office chair soldiering on through however many countless hours Clay's bulk must have been parked in its sagging seat.

"Eye in the sky," Clay declared. "Every table. Every hand. Every transaction."

Greyson stayed silent, studying each monitor in turn. There was a room with roulette and craps tables, another for cards, a third lined with slot machines. A safe peeked from behind the counter of the cashier's cage, clear enough even at this resolution - a common sort with three numbers to dial and a load of wiggle room for finding them.

"Nothing gets past me. But if it does -" Clay slapped a meaty hand on the recorder stack. "It's all right here on tape."

Eight monitors times however many hours of archived footage, divided by recording capacity. By all reasonable estimates, one ugly number. "Must be a hell of a heap of footage to go through."

"It is. I deal. Doesn't really happen all that much. Like I said, nothing gets past me."

Greyson bit back a reminder that Clay had twice stated otherwise. "How much is that much?"

"Nothing you need to know."

A croupier towered over his blackjack table, casually dressed in sweater vest and collared shirt. His hair was swept back in an undercut, his features regular and refined. His impression strangely captivating in its modesty, as if he just seemed like an upright fellow. A genuine Nice Guy, so to speak, as opposed to the gobshites who considered female affection to be owed repayment for basic decency.

Clay's voice sharpened with a suspicious sort of amusement. "Got an eye on my brother there?"

"Along with everything else."

"Redd takes care of himself. Always has, always will. Last thing he needs is any help from those greedy hands of yours."

Greyson flushed, swallowing a crack about who had gotten all the looks in the family and left a negative balance. Who the hell knew how those two had both popped out of the same mum, but truth had its way of beating fiction. Regardless, Greyson was seeing more critical sights. A seat halfway hanging off a monitor. A door frame never shown in full. Odd edges of furniture and scenery and carpet patterns - the delineation of blind spots.

"Eye in the sky, eh?" Greyson stroked his beard. "Seems it might have a few cataracts."

"It does its job well enough."

"Want to bet I can prove otherwise?"

"I'll bet you're out to pull my knob with some other scam and I should rather be throwing your arse back outside."

"Mate, that would be about the worst idea I've ever had. And trust me, I've had some real clunkers."

Clay maintained his glare, clearly not trusting Greyson at all. Then the tectonic plates of his face shifted a touch into curiosity.

"So I'm guessing you have a better one?"

"When I do what I do, I'm still going to show up on tape. I'll make sure there's enough for you to connect the dots. That gives me two options. I come right back to you and count out each chip and note that I took. Or I zip out of here like some plonker and am fast on my way back to prison."

"What's this about enough and dots?"

Greyson had been surveying the staff and clientele - a handful of interested tourists and other folks hanging about. "Looks like I'm the darkest one in here, but let's make it crystal." He waved the rings on his right hand - one signet with his initials, one sapphire to match his suit. "Will these show up on the monitors?"

Clay snorted. "They'll show up on satellite."

"And there you have it." Greyson spread his hands theatrically. "Incontrovertible visual evidence."

"Incontro- oh, what the hell. Have at it." A dismissive wave. "Get out of my sight."

"That's the plan."

* * *

Greyson strolled between the statues of Lucas into a wave of glamor threatening to pull him deep into its undertow. The Casino Brutale was a lush den of bright baize and geometric carpet, burnished brass fixtures and striped silk upholstery, heavy dark furniture with turned legs and carved inlays - even a grandfather clock with a gilded face and floral marquetry. The boxy security cameras were Greyson's sole reminder that he had not stepped back in time to the Roaring Twenties. Then again, from the looks of them, he just might have ended up in the disco era.

Greyson studied those cameras, matching each one with the photo he snapped of the monitor bank. The blind spots began to appear to him, unremarkable sections of carpet or wall taking on a particular focus. Greyson favored those shadows as he made a casual loop of the casino, observing the movement of croupiers and patrons like gears in an irregular clockwork. Adrenaline started to flow, a shot of excitement missing from his analyses of small offices and sterile warehouses, interchangeable boxes housing equally dull reams of papers. From timing himself through deadbolts and desk locks and safe dials - or breaking out the old magnet to pop the solenoids of the electronic variety, artless as such brute force might be.

The eye of the needle was slim, winking in and out of reach. But present nonetheless, and Greyson patiently set about threading it.

A claim of a seat from which only Greyson's right shoulder would be recorded. A short stack of chips sneaked from - and then back to - the neighboring tourist with a confused eye on his poker hand and none at all on his money. A lightning pinch from the croupier's chip tray when its near corner fell into the far edge of every other gaze at the table. Opportune pilfers in kind, a pittance scraped out over the course of an afternoon - still a point made and cosigned in flashes of bejeweled hand.

Redd's table had offered no such chances. As evening crowds began to gather soon after six rang out from the Brutale's clock tower, Greyson thought he just might find one. Redd was readily chatting with his clientele, eyes on their smiles rather than his stash. When a jazz combo kicked up in a nearby lounge, Redd started an act of his own. He shuffled in springs and waterfalls and horseshoe spreads, artfully twirled and flipped cards within his fast rhythm of dealing. Greyson found his lips quirking up in appreciation. For such a bookish seeming fellow, Redd looked to be one hell of a showoff.

And the show was drawing its audience. Randoms wandered past and stuck around with their drinks. A trio of birds tittered by in full satin plumage, going right for Redd's lone empty stool. Redd's gaze would then follow suit, sliding into their cleavage like a fly lured into a pitcher plant. Greyson edged himself into position through the back of the gathering crowd and waited for nature to take its course. So predictable. Too easy. A bit of a letdown, really.

If Redd was indeed acting like some schoolboy who had never seen a tit apart from his mum's, he was doing a good job of hiding it. Not that Greyson had a clear view of his eyes. More so his strong profile, the distinctive bump in his nose, the stretch of shirt sleeve and argyle knit over surprising thickness of muscle. The similarly close fit of slacks over his -

A turn toward the audience. A showstopper shuffle. A flash into the chip tray with a satisfied expelling of a breath Greyson only then realized he was holding.

The cards fell in an unceremonious scatter as a broad hand captured Greyson's. Redd looked over his shoulder with a wrinkle of his curious brow. He spoke after a long and studious moment, almost sounding more amused than annoyed.

"What exactly are you playing at?"

Be swagger. Be smooth. Stick the landing. "Your table, if any of those birds would fly off for a moment."

"If you're here to have a go, you're going about it from the wrong end."

"How do I go about it, then?"

"You ask if I'm available. Which, in fact, I am." Redd turned to one of his admirers, who was occupying a stool with drink in hand and no hand of cards. His voice was pure business, not at all softened to fit the curves on display. "Move along, please. The gentleman here would like his turn."

Greyson warmed at the sincerity of that euphemism as he settled himself and bought in. He was more often described in terms rather spat than spoken. Thief. Scoundrel. Reprobate. Which he arguably was, with a record that might as well be a brand on his hide, but he could be better than that. Burned to be - which perhaps explained that lifelong itch to steal pieces of lives just orbiting into his reach, as if to patch up his own with their spare parts.

Redd took pause at Greyson's minimum bet. "Is that all you have for me?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Just getting myself a taste for now."

"In for a nibble, in for a bite. You may just end up with an appetite."

Equal parts caution and temptation, delivered in a deadpan that had Greyson snorting with honest amusement. "A parable in verse? I've heard worse."

"Are you proposing a challenge?"

"Since you so aptly put it that way, maybe I am." Greyson doubled down on his ace and seven with a firm click of chips. "Hit me."

"By a taste, you mean taking your licks, then?" Redd's concern betrayed a hint of intrigue as he went to do as requested. "Very good, sir."

Redd and the others were bust or well under. Greyson got a four. He paraded his prize in a slow arc, shrugging off glares and basking in the odd smile - especially that slight one of Redd's. "Who's done the licking, now?"

"A show stealer, apparently."

"Is that a problem? Other than your loss being my gain."

"Might not be such a loss in the long run. And now that I think of it, spotlights can be shared." Redd flagged down a passing waiter. "What are you drinking?"

"Seltzer and lime, if you will." Greyson slipped his business card beneath a bill exchanged for more chips. "Much as I'd like to savor this win, I more so relish keeping a clear head on the job."

"How many of my own games are you planning to beat me at?" Redd made the transfer, eyes widening momentarily as he sneaked a peek at the card. "Apparently some I haven't even considered."

"What can I say? I do what I do."

* * *

Redd's appeal certainly ran well beyond card tricks and the occasional groaner that was bad enough to be funny. But there was something more, perhaps even as personal as Greyson wanted to believe. Not the drink - standard hospitality for a new customer - but a friendly edge of challenge. An open invitation and temptation towards another hand, another quip or riposte to spark those deep blue eyes with impish amusement. Greyson only realized how time had flown by when Redd went on a break - and how far he had stretched Clay's patience when his knock at the monitor room door was answered by a yank and a scowl that could melt the door of a bank vault.

"It was just a few rounds."

"It was a good half hour." Clay stabbed at his watch. "And you bet your damn life I counted every minute."

"So time slipped past me a tad. No worries. I was wrapping up anyhow."

"Then wrap up already, will you?"

Greyson counted his spoils aloud from his left pocket dedicated to their storage, chips and notes separated by the tray or apron or cash box from which he had sourced them. Clay's expression remained distinctly skeptical.

"Dump out your other pockets. All of them. Let's see what else slipped past you while you were drinking on the job."

"I only had that seltzer and lime. Redd's treat, my choice. No harm in a little hydration, am I right?"

"I'll believe that when the rest of you comes up empty."

Greyson felt that thrill of being on the proper end of a showdown, of knowing exactly what he would deliver in the face of someone expecting the opposite. At the same time, he was better off doing what Clay asked for before he did it for him - but that could still be done with style.

A keyring. Business cards in an embossed stainless steel case. A thin leather wallet, empty of the small cash allowance Greyson had brought in hopes of getting his wager on. The floppy ears of inverted pockets, a jacket stripped off onto the office chair, shirt sleeves and trouser legs rolled up for good measure. The crowning touch - a slow, satisfied shrug.

"That's enough." Clay waved for Greyson to get himself back together. "If you've got anything shoved up out of my sight, you've bloody well earned it."

"Not sure how I'd manage that without sending myself to hospital, but I guess all things are possible."

"Maybe they are." Clay pulled up a video on his phone. "And maybe you're a man of your word after all."

Clay had started recording the monitor bank when Greyson went to work. He fast forwarded through each dart of his hand from offscreen, snorting at the odd thumbs up and wave. Cracking the barest smile over Greyson's climactic failure at Redd's table, shaking his head as he settled in to play. Wrinkling a brow - showing the family resemblance at last - as Greyson tipped Redd his small win instead of cashing it out.

"There you have it. You win some, you lose some, you make your point. And you also make good after causing more trouble than you planned."

"Give me a hand with this crossword, then?" Clay joked. "Didn't get much chance to work on it while I was babysitting you."

"I can do better than that." Greyson shook out the lapels of his jacket, the last bit of reassembly and tidying. "You can't play all those tapes back at once, now, can you?"

"No more than I can shit in eight loos at the same time."

"How often do you say you might want to?"

"Depends on how bad the takeaway was that night."

Greyson snorted. "Seriously, though."

"Yeah, yeah. I got it. Why do you need to know?"

"In case you think I should fix that along with those blind spots."

Clay looked off at the stack of tape recorders. "A whole new system, huh? Is that what you're thinking?"

"I think it would make your job easier."

"What do you know about my job?"

"I know there's some reason you gave me a chance just now, rather than - as you said - throwing my arse back outside. And since that was an option, I'm guessing it goes beyond Lucas Said So."

"Fine. You got me." Clay slapped a monitor, momentarily clearing up the flurries on its radar. "The day I can dropkick this shitheap of a setup out the door will be right up there with my wedding."

"So we're officially in agreement, but I take it you don't write the checks around here."

"You've got that right, and he's down south across the pond until who the fuck knows when."

"Then where do I direct my sales pitch?"

Clay had a moment of confusion that almost looked worried. When he laughed, it was a sound of pity.

"Best of luck with that one, mate."

* * *

Redd added his pair of plates to the shared deadlift bar. "Yesterday was interesting."

Clay grunted, digging his elbow into a tight spot above his knee that had been bothering him throughout their workout. "You can say that again."

"Bit of a character, isn't he?"

"He's something else. I'll give him that."

"He almost got one past me." Redd took a swig from his water bottle. "Almost."

"And you bought him a drink for his troubles."

"New face, standard courtesy." Never mind that Redd let said courtesy slide for anyone unwantedly apt to see it as a proposition. "Besides, it was only a drink in the dictionary sense."

"Seltzer and lime?"

"How did you know?"

"He told me." Clay shrugged. "Guess he was telling the whole truth about his experiment."

"Did you think he wasn't?"

"Cheeky little git, strutting around like he was out to fuck the place. I'd be a plonker to think otherwise, bruv."

Redd set up his stance and pulled for a triple, wondering if he fit that bill himself. Greyson had first appeared as background flashes of novelty, a groomed beard and shiny woolly head and blue suit electric against his dark complexion. Redd soon began to notice his glint of silver hoop earrings, his wide piercing eyes, his sensual curves of nose and mouth. His confidence verging well into arrogance - an incandescence daring him to win it over.

"Who's out to fuck what now?" Trinity, who had been dropping in on the regular since Clay invited her along on somewhat of a date, had finished up with her dumbbell routine and turned to listen.

"Our new security consultant." Clay put on an air of sarcastic grandeur. "Greyson Grayson. Ex-con expert locksmith."

"Really."

Redd got a secret thrill from that phrase, still shocking in the nerve of its ownership - scarlet letters in black print. "So says his business card."

Trinity looked intrigued. "There must be a story behind that."

"It's a short story. Lucas is as Lucas does. I've long since given up asking." Clay offered his elbow. "Rolling out or sticking around?"

"The first, in more than one sense. The marble is here and ready. The prototype - not at all."

"Go get it, Trin. You show that clay who's boss."

"Body slam it? Put it in a choke hold? Beat it up like the heavy bag?" Trinity teased.

Clay grinned. "Great minds - you know the drill."

Redd switched the bar weight back while Clay escorted Trinity out to her ride, chatting about plans to make when her work let up enough for play. On the surface, an odd couple - deep down, a close match. A bullish fighter, a delicate sculptor. Blue collar and blue blood. Vigor and competition, a shared lust for life - bawdy connotations intended. Redd idly wondered what he might happen to share with the unlikely likes of Greyson - beyond, as he found himself beginning to hope, the proclivities that left him disinterested in Clay's sporadic attempts at matchmaking.

Clay returned, worked himself up with the usual scowl and sumo stomp, and deadlifted his own triple. A moment of red-faced consideration, and he squeezed out an extra pull.

"Why so cynical back there?" Redd asked. "Greyson seemed all right to me."

"Of course he did. He had a grand old time at your table and proving me wrong about everything." Clay snorted. "He even popped the cashier's safe on his way out. Crawled right past and opened it like he already knew the combo."

"Did he take anything?"

"He shut the door right back up, but not before waving at me. I'll say it again - cheeky little git."

"So he didn't."

"But he could have."

"But he'd still be on camera."

"That's not the point I was trying to make."

"Forget it." Redd shrugged off said point as Clay's usual case of stubbornness for its own sake. "Can I have a look?"

"I'd have to pull the tape, rewind all the way back there - ugh. I can think of about fifty better ways to waste my time."

"Wasn't Greyson out to fix that? Replace that system you've been griping about ever since you were put in charge of it?"

"He'll have to get it past Thanos." Clay's mouth curled with pessimistic amusement. "Now that I'd like to see."

"Might not be such a hard sell, switching out those ugly cameras for something that matches the decor."

"With that, uh, professional history of Greyson's? I wished him luck. I wasn't lying."

"Thanos does have his lighter side. Ever see him dance?"

"The chair spin, right? That old fossil's still got something, I guess."

"Then Greyson just might win him over."

"High praise from that man is when he can't find anything wrong." Clay scoffed. "Everything about Greyson will be wrong to him."

"You thought that at first, too, didn't you? But you gave him a chance."

"A small one. He'd better not wear it out."

Redd added his plates back before Clay demanded that he quit running his mouth and get on with it. His last set had felt light, flying off the floor like a bag of rubbish. "Can you grab me the tens and fives?"

Clay looked at the bar with some surprise. "Going for a new max, then?"

"You know it. It feels like one of those days."

"Because you're all fired up about our new 'friend'?"

Redd felt himself heating up beyond the standard flush of exertion. "Because of second coffee."

"You always have second coffee."

"Sometimes it hits me across the face a few more times than usual."

Clay added the requested plates with a slight shake of his head. Nevertheless he gave Redd the customary pound on his shoulder as he got himself set up, followed by a litany of motivation. Eye of the tiger. Winner takes it all. Work it harder, make it better.

Redd strapped in and grasped the bar like he was about to rip it in half. He braced hard, looking up into position as Greyson's face flashed before him again. Nodding, smiling, dare say even flirting - and the bar rose with such firm and smooth force that Redd pulled it again. Then once more - a grinder, but locked out nonetheless, and sent crashing back down after that finishing moment as Redd almost fell right on top of it.

"Damn it, bruv. Whatever that was, go get yourself some more of it."

Redd smiled through his heavy breaths of recovery. "Here's hoping."


	2. Rivalry and Reconnaissance

The office of Gorecki, Architect was a small solid house in the village near the Brutale, distinguished only by its engraved metal placard. Greyson had found no insight into this place, no presence or advertisement apart from a phone number in a local directory. Which he was lucky to have at all, as opposed to dropping off a business card with a tag line that might stand to be kept from certain audiences - at least until Greyson securely got his foot through a door primed for a hair trigger slam.

An estate house casino called for the full on peacock strut. A black box like this - Serious Grey, in the literal sense. Suit of said color, matching necktie with a subtle white pattern. Stainless steel watch, no other jewelry. A thin black briefcase with copies of his reference letters - and, in a matching leather folio, a tablet computer with the evidence he was to show.

Four stern generations of Gorecki portraits scrutinized Greyson in the reception area, all men in their thirties who looked to have passed down the same dark suit and ruffled cravat along with their bushy-browed, aquiline severity. As Greyson went to meet Thanos some forty years after posing for this mark of his inheritance, he reminded himself that this little show of force was standard issue. Legacy and tradition and all such bollocks - and even a circus clown would show a terminal case of pissface from playing statue for hours on end.

Time had only sharpened the edge on Thanos' pale gaze even as it sunk his eyes back into his skull. He sat unmoving in his wheelchair behind a heavy desk flanked with glassed bookcases. Unsmiling, unblinking - maybe even undead, though his wild cloud of white hair seemed to have a life of its own. Greyson had strode in here with the usual spring in his step, subtle but nonetheless present. Under that frigid stare, his confidence began to wither like the mummified crags of the old man's face.

"Good afternoon, M-" Greyson caught himself as he glimpsed the framed diploma from Cambridge. "Dr. Gorecki."

Thanos showed no reaction to Greyson's near gaffe, assuming he had even heard it in the first place. When he finally spoke, his words were razor cuts tinged with rust.

"Who are you again?"

Funny how this greeting was the opposite extreme from Clay's. Greyson tensed up with the idea that there must be good reason one had heard his full story and the other next to nothing. "Lucas didn't say I might be in touch?"

"Lucas gave me the name of his new security consultant. That was all. No true introduction, it seems, to this professional I was led to expect."

Greyson bristled at the edge on that last word, its implication that he wasn't - which had better damn well have to do with uncertainty about his qualifications and not the glaring contrast between his own face and the pasty mask of parchment across from him. "I assure you, sir, my work is-"

"Show me."

Now that Greyson was prepared for. He popped his briefcase open on Thanos' desk - after a gesture at an empty spot and pause for some sign to put it elsewhere instead - and set up his tablet with the highlight reel of his blind spot demonstration. Sourced from Clay's phone video, small and a bit shaky - but slowed down and marked well enough to speak for itself.

"No, no, no." Thanos waved the tablet away as Greyson was propping it on the desk. "If I wanted to sit and stare at a screen, I would go waste my money on a television. I was expecting your curriculum vitae." And snappishly, as Greyson put school and life together - "The account of your career. Education. Accreditation. Qualification."

Greyson handed Thanos his portfolio of client letters, which were thankfully more discreet than the business cards remaining in his pocket. Thanos flipped through them without any visible reaction. On the wall behind him was a lithograph of a Somerthwaite Manor, an impossible mouthful of a name serving to shut the likes of Greyson out of circles who could pronounce that rot just as simply and soon as saying mama. Its architecture was familiar, and Greyson soon placed it as the foundation of the Brutale.

Thanos set the letters aside. He looked up, unaffected. "Is this all?"

"My business is new. I can't claim anything like your family's legacy, but perhaps I can build one for myself."

"Where did you study? Did you study?"

"I had a practical education. Apprenticeships. I learned on the job, so to speak." First from a lockpicking friend impressed with how Greyson took to the art - later, from a master locksmith who needed a business partner and never asked about his background. Greyson had found the unofficial sidelines of said business more lucrative, and its granted access particularly valuable to his oldest and most trusted associates.

"What sort of jobs?"

"The usual. Lost keys and combinations, the need for discretion rather than breaking the whole mess apart." Greyson spread his hands in a conclusive gesture. "The craftsman's touch."

Thanos' eyes sharpened. "Infiltration of locks, so to speak, rather than their installation?"

"I've done those, both then and now. My early career just focused more on recovery."

"Recovery." Thanos had slowly turned that word over in his mouth with a hint of spite. "I see. Perhaps you take well to sticking your nose in the business of others. Or perhaps you're just a common thief." A dry bark of a laugh. "Ah, Lucas. Should I have expected anything less?"

"Common? I'm everything but." Tearing off a guise that had never truly been there to begin with - "As to that last bit, I'm retired."

"So you say, you little miscreant."

"So my clients know." Greyson laid a firm hand on his portfolio. "Call them. Ask any question. Ask about the cash left in plain sight, the account numbers. Ask how much of that bait I took. Go ahead. Please."

"Why waste my breath any further? That manor is my family's masterwork. A house of secrets, yes, but it keeps them close and well." Thanos' blue stare fell on Greyson like ice. "Thus perfectly safe from the likes of you."

Greyson packed up his tablet and stormed out, leaving his portfolio behind. If nothing else, this crumpled crackpot could get his jollies chucking it into the fireplace  - or put it to work in the loo and give himself one bastard of a paper cut. Greyson had thought he might be calling his subcontractors, making a short list of equipment options, otherwise moving the surveillance replacement forward. Instead he drove to the Brutale, mouth set in sly determination.

"So you say."

* * *

Redd felt the break time tap on his shoulder. He cleared his hand, introducing his relief according to the same procedure although his table was full of the usual daytimers well familiar with the old guard. As he left, a voice struggling toward confidence called from a nearby table. "Excuse me. Mr. Rockridge?"

"Redd." In his own early days at the Brutale, Redd had erred well on the side of formality until he started to feel secure in his bearings. Caitlin, the card room's newest croupier, was likely doing the same. "How can I be of help?"

A slow and pompous demand. "You can help me get what I'm owed."

"Mr. Pinkerton." Redd let sarcasm edge his words. "Of course."

It was a nod at infamy rather than a move to do as requested. Mr. Pinkerton - absolutely not on a first name basis - was a pinched and dour pencil of a man, that tightfisted sort of high roller who threw chips around like pence while ginning up accusations that the house was out to wring him dry. Redd suspected that one of said accusations, tried on him some time ago without success, was being trotted back out to a new and friendly face open with eagerness to serve.

"I bought in with a hundred. Two fifties. This is all I got in return." Mr. Pinkerton gestured indignantly at fifty pounds of chips stacked in front of him. "Will you teach this girl how to count?"

"Caitlin has a name, as you're aware, and she's no longer a girl. Besides, her maths are just fine. I should know. I trained her."

Mr. Pinkerton flinched as Caitlin's tense shoulders began to relax.

"She's a fast learner, Mr. Pinkerton. I'm sad I can't say the same for everyone. When's the last time the old twofer trick flew around here?"

Mr. Pinkerton stewed silently, which said plenty enough for Redd's purposes.

"Carry on with your good work, Caitlin. If there are any more issues while I'm out, feel free to call on my brother."

"Thank you so much, Mr.-" Caitlin smiled with clear gratitude. "Redd."

Redd headed off to the west wing, resolving to give Caitlin a rundown of the Brutale's gallery of rogues. Perhaps to include Greyson - but his scams were tests, his spoils borrowed and later returned. His focus on Redd uniquely beyond that, or so he allowed himself to hope. It was at least something, a spark of workplace joy that Redd feared was otherwise fading. More and more, Redd was called on for help and input and training, trusted to settle errors and disputes - looked up to for reasons other than his height. None of this had brought a bump in title or salary, let alone an invitation to the Brutale's iconic masquerades. Only a bespoke ram's mask for working those parties - and a key to the library, which Lucas had slipped Redd after a chat about his collection of books on tablet. And which was, to be fair, a generous gesture, given the eclectic and eccentric rarity of Lucas' collection.

Redd always locked the library door behind him. This time it was open a hair, as if some staff or hired service had gone in there to clean. He settled back into his green velvet armchair with the illustrated life and works of Lord Byron left bookmarked on its seat. Redd could have read this all electronically, plain text on flat glass. Here he luxuriated in the weight of crisp paper and leather binding, the drawings exclusive to this first edition, the stillness of the stacks undisturbed by door slams and loo flushes and Clay flipping on the telly just because. In sanctuary and solitude, in the reverence due for an icon of such flamboyant and magnetic excess. In other words, Lucas - no wonder he had an entire shelf of Byronic literature - and very much unlike Redd, which had a lot to do with the fascination.

Soft footsteps and sounds of motion echoed from the south end of the library. The cleaners must have come back to work - though Redd didn't hear any sweeping or dusting or the squeak of window washing. Rather, rummaging and mumbling in a rough rich voice that Redd placed just as he poked his head from his secluded nook to glimpse the back of Greyson's.

Redd smiled sympathetically as he caught snips of elaborate insults, just audible but pointedly enough aimed at some arse of an architect long since lost the plot. Greyson's meeting with Thanos must have gone about as well as Clay expected. The expression remained, more pleasantly so, as Redd turned the page and began working his way through a love poem.

> No specious splendour of this stone  
>  Endears it to my memory ever;  
>  With lustre only once it shone,  
>  And blushes modest as the giver.
> 
> Some, who can sneer at friendship’s ties,  
>  Have, for my weakness, oft reprov’d me;  
>  Yet still the simple gift I prize,  
>  For I am sure, the giver lov’d me.
> 
> He offer’d it with downcast look,  
>  As fearful that I might refuse it;  
>  I told him, when the gift I took,  
>  My only fear should be, to lose it.

Redd flushed like the titular carnelian as an image flashed before him, silly and indulgent though it was - his eyes wide and nervous, his hand stretched out with a jewelry box for Greyson. Who, come to think of it, was more than a touch Byronic himself in every tantalizing sense of the archetype. And not in search of reading material, which he had stripped from the shelf he was now prodding at.

The Brutale certainly kept its secrets. Lucas loved to show up like a master of ceremonies, not so much to be seen coming or going, and Redd never thought the specifics to be any of his business. He understood the mansion on a need to know basis, from the casino and theater to the first floor music halls and the guest rooms above where the occasional drunken reveler might need an escort. But there were strangely placed pieces of furniture, walls that seemed to leave odd spaces - the entire south end of the west wing without any obvious doors. Of course Greyson would be sketching a full map of the estate, slipping through any of its cracks - and, judging from a grumble about comparative intelligence, determined to outsmart its mysteries.

The murmurs fell silent long enough that a followup exclamation and soft creak of hinges nearly jolted Redd from his chair. He sneaked another look to see Greyson disappearing into an open bookshelf, simply yet handsomely dressed in a plain shirt and slacks. When Greyson turned back around with a small camera, grinning for his self-portrait, he no longer cared about keeping his voice down - just as Redd lost all concern about being seen.

"Bow to your sensei, you barmy old feather plucker."

* * *

The Brutale's west wing had been taunting Greyson with its impenetrability since his first poke after its innards. He found a solidly attached painting on the ground floor, a suspicious section of wainscoting on the first, no nearby switch for either - as opposed to the artless wreckage of power tools and a followup flight down the driveway piloted by a certain Clay Rockridge. When Greyson circled back downstairs to spring a lock just off the main hall, he almost had to laugh. What greater cliche than a bookcase door, and where else to put one but a library?

Said door was admittedly as good as they got. Not in the middle of the south wall - which might as well be marked with a blinking neon arrow - but in a corner, lined right up with the rest with the barest sliver of clearance around its free edges. Its lever was flush against the backboard, far enough in shadow that Greyson overlooked it as he cleared the shelf. As he posed for proof of his discovery, his grin spread with glee beyond the taste of victory. Old tricks could still have their charms, even if their architect had none whatsoever.

Greyson pored over a parlor with a floorboard cubby and a door to an outer hallway, both near seamless against their surroundings, and a small dining room with a dumbwaiter that would have been tempting back when he was a short slip of a lad. Up the spiral staircase was a mother lode Greyson forced himself to leave for later, knowing he would otherwise be in there all night - not that he expected to sleep much before morning.

Lucas' office.

Greyson caught a few fitful winks in bed and left his village lodgings before breakfast was served. He let himself in through the Brutale's front door, timing the lock when it proved more stubborn than expected, as the muted light of dawn began to deepen into gold. The day before, Greyson had popped his head upstairs just long enough to see what sort of room he was climbing into. As he went in for his first proper look, he queued up a preemptive load of snark for a monument to ego and extravagance that would make those casino statues look like chess pawns.

Instead he saw a more subdued sort of elegance - a plush patterned rug, striped silk seating, tufted leather swivel chair behind a dark wood desk with a covered recess for a laptop. A Mucha advertisement for holiday in Monte Carlo, a similarly ornate lithograph from the 1921 New Orleans Carnival, a watercolor view of the French Quarter. On the desk was Lucas' bird of prey mask, which Greyson had spotted on his first glance in here, and a head shot of a woman with a full face of makeup and feathers in her pale blonde upsweep.

Greyson picked the desk drawers and nearby file cabinet, leaving his business card in each. The safe, unsurprisingly stashed behind the Mucha, was almost too good for its obvious location. It was as classic as its camouflage, its four wheels machined with such precision that Greyson had to break out the graph paper instead of keeping it all in his head - or lucking out with a factory combination like the other day in the casino.

Slow turns of the dial, fingers alert for the subtlest tick of resistance. Marks on the graph, possible boundaries of wheel gates, gradually converging on four unordered numbers. Entering the results, one permutation at a time, until that decisive click and unlatch that never failed to bring a chill. A ceremonious reveal of the prize, and Greyson's heart leaped into his throat.

The safe was stuffed with cash, thick stacks of fat notes in banded bricks. Greyson did the math and computed a percentage. A bill plucked here and there, a fair and well earned bonus for the arsepain of putting up with Thanos. A real emerald ring for Greyson's green suit, an equal deposit to his savings. Pocket change to this silly rich bastard - if he even noticed it gone.

And a fall right back down that damned rabbit hole. Greyson was professional. Reformed. Above board and above temptation. He would leave his card, shut the door, and carry on with his reconnaissance. Still he stared into the safe, counting the cash yet again - straining against his proverbial lead as he breathed himself back from the red line.

A piano had been filtering in from the music halls outside, scales and chords barely noticed through the focus of safecracking. A warmup, as the main act was now in full swing. Classical music was normally background noise, yet another posh and intellectual whimsy Greyson saw no way to get his head into. But these notes flowed around him like a river, and he wanted to strip down starkers and bask in their rippling harmony.

Greyson locked up the safe and left, forgetting to look for the seam of the door into the hallway. He followed the music closer and sneaked a peek into a practice room. And thrilled yet again, with a deeper and warmer temptation, at that thick brown undercut, that broad back in cable knit, that rugged refinement of profile. So Redd was a musician - not quite the magician Greyson had guessed from his card tricks, but very much one in his own sense.

Greyson told himself to step away, to get back to work already, to stop torturing himself with the trappings of a better life forever beyond his grasp. He pictured a wife and a pair of kids right off the telly, standing next to Redd to sing at the piano. Sitting down for Christmas dinner, smiling for the camera with matching sweaters and a bow on the dog's collar just to brass knuckle the gut punch of the whole lot. When Redd reached to turn his sheet music, Greyson watched for the inevitable flash of plain metal that might as well be a cold shower.

That bare left hand only fanned the embers.

Maybe Redd didn't wear jewelry. Maybe he was engaged or close enough. Maybe Greyson should put a lid on the pointless overthought, swing back by his table. Talk to him - he already knew Redd didn't bite.

At least not in the bad way.

* * *

Monday had done its worst and kept on digging. Redd hauled himself out of a thin and spotty sleep, fought his way through a lethargic workout, dozed off on the train as Nabokov's lush and theatrical prose fell flat on the glass of his tablet. His table had been dragging rather than cracking, a half beat behind his usual rhythm. When ten o'clock rang the end of Redd's shift, it was more so a whimper than a sigh of relief.

Redd had sent Greyson a message, a seat left open without pressure or obligation. _Hope you're not too locked up in your work. Shuffle back around sometime if you want to try your luck again._ But Greyson had not returned to Redd's table - or the casino, for that matter, even as background glimpses of suit and beard and glinting silver. If not for his signature sedan in the Brutale's driveway, he might as well have stepped into Narnia when he disappeared behind that bookshelf.

Or perhaps Greyson had done so regardless. Redd lived a steady routine of dealing and weight lifting, piano and card practice, books worked through in the quiet of his down time. Socialization was rare, casual meetups near impossible. Greyson would be just as caught up in work and play and on his way back to London eventually. A mere spark in Redd's life as theirs met so briefly - but still he continued to burn.

Redd closed out his table and turned to head for the bar. A day off to lie in, a great many others since he last allowed himself a few - a proper kick in the arse of the frustrating whims of the universe, foolish as such indulgence might be. If Clay had been also wrapping up for the night instead of out and about with Trinity, Redd might very well have matched him shot for shot.

"Leaving so soon?"

Greyson leaned against the table, casually flipping a chip, which - after his initial jolt of surprise - Redd noticed had indeed come from his tray.

"Arriving so late?" Redd joked back as he snatched the chip in midair.

"Late for what, exactly?"

"To try your luck, at least right here and now."

"So I can't have another go?"

"Well, that depends on what you're after."

"I'm after a drink. Thought you might care to join me." Greyson brandished another chip taken out from under Redd's nose while Redd was taking in the cocksure tilt of his head, the playful gleam in his eyes, the slight tease of smile above his beard. "And this time, I'm buying."

"Not with that, I hope."

"Not at all. Just having a laugh." Greyson gently returned the chip to its place. "Sorry it didn't get one from you."

"After this bloody day, I doubt I have any left."

"Is that a challenge I hear?"

"It could be, if you play your hand right."

Greyson's brow raised a suggestive notch as he waggled his fingers above the chip tray. "Should I be keeping it to myself, then?"

Redd smiled as a warmth dared to bloom in his stomach. "Perhaps just for now."

* * *

The bar was quiet even for a weeknight, its scattered patrons drinking in silence to a soft background of classic swing. They claimed a pair of barstools - more casual than the corner booth Redd coveted, but close enough for conversation in the woody aura of Greyson's cologne, and for their arms to brush together as they settled in to order.

Greyson smirked at the printed drink menu and its purported array of exotic and lethal adulterants. "Should I be signing a waiver or my own death certificate?"

"You should pick your poison. How about a Slithering Strike? That one's particularly fun." Redd leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper and a secret thrill from Greyson's proximity. "It's mostly just absinthe."

"What about the rest?"

"Not absinthe, but also not quite as advertised."

"Hmm, tempting, but maybe I will try my luck after all." Greyson turned to the bartender. "Surprise me."

"And me as well, please. Let's do this together." Redd nodded. "Double Down. Make that two."

"Isn't that a little redundant?"

"It's a wild card. Literally, I mean. Two base spirits, one heavy pour, and whatever else the house decides to throw in there. You never know what you're going to get. Well, apart from one awful morning if you don't watch out for yourself."

"Are you going to hold me to that?"

"I can. I'll try. As long as I don't need you to do the same for me."

"That bad of a day, eh?"

"It was." Redd met Greyson's eyes, relaxing as he saw a hint of concern. "But it's getting better."

Whether eavesdropping or exercising due prudence, the bartender brought a jug of water along with the drinks, which were deep gold and sprigged with herbs. Greyson and Redd raised their glasses for a tag team toast to giving this all a shot to make for a good thyme.

"Wish I could have dropped back sooner." Greyson took a measured sip. "I wasn't locked up, but enough else around here is."

"So I heard."

Greyson waited for Redd to elaborate.

"Dried up dingleberry. Withered old cockwomble. Nice sheepskin you've got there - for wiping my jam roll, that is."

"You were in there?" Greyson laughed. "Damn, but you're quiet."

"That's the idea, it being a library and all."

"And there I was, disturbing the peace."

"Not that much. It was a poetic sort of frustration - went well with my reading." Redd smiled. "Cockney and the classics. Never would have thought."

"That Byron on the armchair? Talk about a real nutter. Not in the bad way, though."

"Do you know him?"

"I know of him. He lived fast, died young, got around quite a lot." A pointed look of intrigue. "And not just with women."

Redd snorted. "He wrote poetry, too. He was rather famous for that."

"About getting around."

"So you have read him."

"Not really, but it sounds like I'm missing out. Got any suggestions?"

"I'll leave you a bookmark." Redd took a long pull of his drink, daring to think that he actually would.

Greyson took a patient sip of his own as if about to ask when to expect it. Then he piped back up with sudden interest. "I should say I heard you too. Playing piano. It was nice."

With some embarrassment, Redd thought of recent practice sessions pocked with their share of sour notes and missed beats. "I'm glad you think so."

"I know so. That was the first and only time classical didn't put me to sleep. Did the opposite, in fact."

"It's more interesting than people realize, especially to play. Did you want suggestions there as well?"

"I've got one for you. You should perform."

"I wish. That's part of what brought me here. Get in the door, and opportunity will follow. So much for that." Redd sighed. "At least I'm staying sharp in the meantime."

"Well, your notes didn't fall flat to me. What were you playing, anyhow?"

"Liszt. Liebestraum." By far the most difficult of the songs Redd had been working on. And then, flinging the translation to the proverbial wind - "Love dream."

Redd braced himself for Greyson to get carried away with that, to poke and prod as he had about the more suggestive works of Byron. Instead they sat and drank in silence as the bar's soundtrack switched over to a languid and meandering saxophone. Redd sank into the music as his other dreams unwound, unspoken. A promotion to head croupier. An invite to the masquerade. Belonging at the Brutale, fully and truly, rather than continuing to press his nose against its carnival glass. Now here was the seed of friendship, or perhaps the optimism of alcohol. Still Redd began to hope, just as he always had. Perhaps this time would finally be different.

"So what's the rest of what brought you here?" Greyson asked. "To work, that is."

"Clay, for the most part. He came on as a bouncer while I was off at uni in Southampton. English and music - had no particular career plans for either, but might as well focus on my interests, right? After I graduated, I moved in with him while I got myself sorted."

"That must have been a real treat."

Redd bristled, even though Clay had likely shown Greyson his worst and considered it his best. "We do get along, you know."

"More often than not, I take it?"

"Well enough that we're still in the same flat."

"Confirmed bachelors, eh?"

Redd flushed at the salacious draw of that phrase, at the hope of its implication. "Clay isn't."

Greyson savored his cocktail with a look of satisfaction and no followup about why Clay wasn't living with his implied wife. No question, then, that the remark was meant in the Victorian sense, and Redd tried not to worry himself with processing Greyson's reaction.

"Must be nice," Greyson mused. "Having a brother around."

"You don't have any siblings?"

"Not that I know of."

Redd stared at his drink after the perfect tone of sympathy.

"It's fine. I dealt. I found my own sort of family." Greyson laughed ruefully. "Not really sure they raised me right, but here I am."

"Here you are." Redd raised his glass, as did Greyson. "And here's to that."

"And right now? There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

"Likewise."

They relaxed together, enjoying their drinks and the odd quip and chat as the bar began to empty for the night. When the clock tower chimed eleven, Greyson flipped out a pocket watch as if to signal his own exit as well.

"Hate to go, but you know. All good things must come to an end."

Redd smiled. "So you got what you were after, right?"

"Good drinks, better company." Greyson drained his dregs with a smirk. "Damn well I did."

The spark in his eye loosened a curiosity from Redd's tongue. "And what about behind the bookshelf?"

"You saw that?" Greyson laughed with some surprise. "Did you go back there yourself, then?"

"You're the security bloke. I'm not. I'd rather not get myself in trouble."

"When's the last time you did?"

"Secondary. Some stupid prank of Clay's. At least that's what I claimed when we were both taken in for it."

"So it wasn't all his idea?"

"His idea, my failed execution. So much for being the brains of that operation." Redd gave his cocktail a bottoms up. "Or being the good boy who got to pin it on the bad one."

"Well, that was then and this is now. And now there's not so much thinking to be had."

"What exactly are you getting at?"

Greyson slapped cash on the bar, covering them both with a healthy tip. He jerked a nod at the door. "Let's roll."

* * *

As they crossed the great hall on their little jaunt, Redd opened his mouth to call it off. He was about to miss the last train back to Norwich, to be charged for an overnight in the guest rooms upstairs. He was definitely not meant to be where Greyson was taking him. But the tease of taboo was digging its seductive hooks, very much wrapped up in the growing intrigue of Greyson himself.

Greyson insisted on picking the library door before Redd made any move to unlock it, and he took out a small torch instead of asking to put on the chandeliers. Its thin beam cut bright white through the darkness of the stacks, catching the dance of dust motes kicked up by their creeping footsteps. Redd wondered where else Greyson had slipped through like this, perhaps in cap and body stocking rather than suit and tie. The thought was more enticing than he cared to admit, and not just because of an outfit leaving little else for him to picture. Still it was quite the distraction. Lean muscle and lithe waist, the frontal view below that - and Greyson turned with a knowing grin as Redd flushed with sudden gratitude for his insistence on the drama of the dark.

But Greyson wasn't looking right into Redd's mind - rather at that one corner shelf he had led them to. He stacked a pair of books on Redd's outstretched arms, leaned in to work the switch behind them. A dramatic pause, a whispered Open Sesame, and the hidden door began to swing inward.

A crack of light appeared, and Greyson almost slammed the shelf shut before remembering to be quiet. No explanation was needed, even before Greyson's furtive hiss as he replaced the books.

Lucas had returned.


	3. Keys to a Wish

Clay eyed the briefcase Greyson had just set on the table in his surveillance room. He stood with square chest and arms crossed, his topmost fingers rising and falling in slow steady taps as if keeping that itch away from his foot. "This had better be worth the wait."

"It is."

"And you'd damn well better not have gotten your hands on anything you didn't need to."

"I didn't."

"Because you bloody well know this all goes up to Lucas as soon as you walk out that door."

"That's the idea."

All but tossed from Thanos' office, Greyson had gone straight to Clay with the brainstorm he had stormed out with. He would dig through the Brutale, uncover its secrets. Open its strongboxes and hidey holes, its crawl spaces and covert passages. Flip a bird to that geriatric git, shove all his slander and judgment right back up his crooked beak - with a tip of the hand, of course, from the ringmaster himself, who must already be checking his work. Clay had grunted his approval with the condition that Greyson stay the hell out of his way and the speculation that he would go ahead regardless. Which Greyson had to admit was right on, if for nothing else but his own amusement.

Greyson was tempted to keep up the mystique, to wring out a grumble or impatient gesture or demand to get on with it already, but the benefits of playing nice with Clay - especially the fringe ones - beat the entertainment value of continuing to prod at him. He popped his briefcase open and presented the first exhibit of many. An instant photo of his smile in the library bookcase, which Clay boggled at as he set it out for display.

"They still make those?" Clay asked.

"That's what I said until I went looking just for shites. One-offs are just the thing for this sort of work."

"Yeah. I mean, you could take a photo of the photo." Waving Greyson away as he started to unlock his phone - "Not like you did."

"Or scan it. But tell that to a technophobe."

"Is that why he wouldn't watch your video?"

"He won't even watch the telly." Greyson weakened his voice, draped it with cobwebs, shook a fist for good measure. "If I wanted to sit and stare at a screen…"

"Oh, bollocks. Thanos didn't really say that." Clay did a double take. "Did he?"

"Word for word."

"Heh. I guess I can't say I'm surprised."

"I'm surprised he even has a telephone, as opposed to a telegraph."

Clay snorted. "Or a carrier pigeon."

Greyson continued to lay out his pictures. A thumbs up in front of Lucas' open safe. Other such cheek at slid panels and floorboards, the false back of a cabinet, the mouth of a crawl space Greyson saw no point in dirtying himself in just to show he had found it. Clay's expression shifted in shutter clicks of its own - narrowed eyes, raised brows, mouth tweaked in disbelieving amusement. The full array left him shaking his head for a good moment before his face began to crack into a smile.

"You really did get into every arsecrack of this place, didn't you?"

"Maybe not all of them, but I got enough for two weeks of poking." Greyson felt the start of a flush at a particularly brazen thought sprung to mind by Clay's word choice and worsened by his own. "As long as I made a right bellend of Thanos."

"You bloody well did. He's going to shit a brick."

"Or a fossil."

"He is a fossil."

"True, true." Greyson shrugged. "Takes one to pinch one off, I'd say."

As Clay's grunt of response turned into a laugh, his simian scowl relaxed into a shade of something appreciable. Nowhere near Redd territory, but tolerable. Workable. Maybe even reasonable beyond the extent of humoring Greyson for the sake of sorting out his surveillance system.

"Huh. These are good. Damn good. And I couldn't give a flying fuck if you had sent them around." Clay picked up a photo of a hidden cubby behind a panel in the hallway to the theater. "You took them so close, they might as well be anywhere else. You'd have to know this place like your knob to make any sense of them." An afterthought - "Not like I know mine that well, but you know."

"What can I say?" Greyson saluted. "I'm a professional."

"I guess you are, aren't you? Hate to say I'd been all ready to see how far I could throw you."

"Are you glad you didn't?"

"Yeah." A thoughtful pause. "You know, maybe Redd has you right after all."

"How so?" Smooth as sandpaper, and Greyson internally kicked himself for blurting that out instead of waiting for any details Clay felt like giving.

"He let you keep him out late, and he wouldn't shut up about how fun you were. Nice of you to give him a ride."

"I was the bad influence, right? I had to make good after that."

And it was Greyson's pleasure regardless. Redd was a tall and close fit for the front seat even after pushing it back the full way. His shoulder was palpably near, his muscled thigh pressed against the center console where he rested a hand. Greyson thought to reach out for those graceful fingers, see if they would curl around his. Instead he stole glimpses in the oncoming wash of headlamps, studied the strength of face and body alike - and snapped his eyes right back to the road when he was caught by Redd's own. And then cursed himself all the way back to the village after seeing Redd into his flat, wondering what pathetic cavity his bollocks had crawled up into just then.

"I guess so." Clay gathered up Greyson's pictures. "But you know I'll make good on these."

"Appreciated. When should I-"

Clay waved at Greyson to cut him off. "I'll call you."

* * *

Redd liked to sit down at the piano with plans in mind. Fingering to step through and string together, to smooth out and snap into strict rhythm. Pieces to rehearse and polish, sometimes to shake the rust from. A breath of improvisational playtime, freeing his hands from the constant pressure toward a virtuosity that forever seemed a botched note away.

As of late, such focus had been blurring with its own caprice. Perhaps this had to do with the return of Lucas, whose energy hummed throughout the Brutale even though his face remained unseen. Or with summer slipping toward the cusp of autumn that marked the yearly masquerade, although Redd had long since resigned himself to working it yet again. Or with that bright end to a dismal day, all too brief that it was, and a continuing sense of Greyson's presence. Keeping an ear out for prying and whispers, an eye for a bright flash of suit or the neatly groomed confidence of his balding head. Never catching any of the above, yet knowing that he was around, even before Clay grumbled some appreciation for his ongoing work - and before Redd found business cards replacing the bookmarks he had found the nerve to place at Byron's poems about other men.

Redd had come into the practice room to work on his Liszt, toward the full arrangement of a section he had simplified as a first step of learning. A glimpse out the leaded glass windows put him in the mood for a Chopin nocturne that sounded like the Brutale's exquisite gardens gilded with late afternoon sun. He left the metronome unwound, falling into expression and daydream - relaxing the reins on his imagination along with his sense of rhythm. Seeing a certain face among the flowers, deep luminous brown in a cream suit with purple boutonniere as if dressed for his own wedding.

And then leaning in the doorway within the corner of his eye, and Redd dropped the beat as he startled upright on his bench. Greyson strutted in, back in royal blue and keyring atwirl on his index finger - which, as he came closer, turned out to be a collection of picks.

Redd sorted himself, falling into an impromptu melody. "What were you getting into just now?"

"This bastard of a panel next door." Greyson snapped his picks into a handful and slid them back into his pocket. "Half an hour of wiggling and it just won't pop."

A sly arch of the brow. "Does it need more of a tug than a tickle?"

"That, or it just doesn't like me. Thinks I've gone soft."

"Try your left hand instead. Fool it into thinking you're someone else."

Greyson started to open his mouth as if queuing up much worse. He stopped, at a loss for words, and shook his head with a hearty laugh. "All right. You win. Maybe I should be asking what's gotten into you."

"Nothing, really. Just a better mood than usual." And the fact that Greyson had read what was left for him - and was running with Redd's innuendo instead of away in the other direction.

"Am I helping?"

"Maybe a little."

Greyson echoed that tease. "That's it?"

"I never said it had to be."

Greyson listened to a few more bars, eyeing a chair near the piano bench. He sat down and situated himself. "Are you all right if I hang out for a bit?"

"As long as you're all right with my mistakes."

"You haven't been scared off by mine." Greyson gave a sad sort of chuckle. "What's a bad note or two next to that?"

Redd returned to Chopin with the calming echo of Greyson's confidence in him rather than the tension he might otherwise feel before an audience of one. He began to ponder what Greyson was hinting at, thinking it went far beyond a hand sneaked into his chip tray. Perhaps with the struggles of his youth, its roughness implied by that remark about his dubious makeshift family. Or rather with his imprisonment, blasted out on his business cards as if he took pride in bouncing back from it. A brazen flip of a stigma that Redd hated to admit he had flinched at upon first read - and that must burn deeper than he could ever imagine.

Greyson spoke up as Redd considered what to play next. "Damn, but you make that look easy."

Redd thought to describe the years of toil behind that, the associated and perpetual self-doubt. Instead he felt the urge to show off. "Want me to try something harder?"

"Only if you're up for it."

"I could be up for a lot more than that."

"That's good to know."

Redd snorted. "I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"I thought you were about to say you let me have it."

"In that case - yes. I did. You're welcome."

Greyson leaned back with the satisfaction of winning. "So what else do you have for me?"

"Something I think you'll quite like, at least I hope so."

A sparkle in the eye. "I know so."

Redd exhaled, swallowed, and drew himself up into strict posture. His hands settled onto the keys as the metronome ticked off in his head, winding him up into an agile and meticulous clockwork. Redd closed his eyes and counted down, set to sprint at the raise of the curtain.

Rippling swells of arpeggio beneath floating and crystalline melody. A swift stairway to heaven, a breath in the clouds. Strong bass strikes into a delicate dance, trilling and soaring and descending on a gentle current. Soft steps of intervals, a ceremonious finale - sunset over the still waters Redd pictured himself collapsing in to cool the heat under his collar.

Greyson had been relaxing in his chair. Now he was sitting upright on the edge, eyes wide and gobsmacked, and he made no move to pretend otherwise when he noticed Redd looking.

"That was -" A wolf whistle.

"That was exhausting."

"You look like you've just had a workout. How fast do your hands move, anyhow?"

"Fast enough, I suppose, but you should know that wasn't full tempo."

"You should know that I don't care. So what song was that again?"

" _Un sospiro_. A sigh. Which is about all you want to do after you're done with it." Redd smiled. "It's another Liszt, if that rings a bell."

Greyson lit up. "It does. What a bloke, eh? A real rock star - well, for his time."

"You've done your research."

"You got me. I looked him up. Couldn't say I knew the first thing about classical, so I figured I might as well fix that."

"You picked quite a place to start. Liszt was an original, to say the least. He wrote works like this for bragging rights, and he played them while smoking cigars. Grandiose, vulgar, and perhaps more than a bit mad, but sometimes that's part of the creative territory." Redd felt wistful. "It must have been a treat to study with him."

"If he didn't drive you right off a cliff before you got anywhere."

"I'd risk it."

Greyson looked skeptical.

"You never know who you might get along with until you try - and what good might be worth all the trouble."

"Heh. Someone's an optimist."

"Or a hopeless marshmallow, if you ask Clay when I calm down some troublemaker he was all set to pound."

"I like my version better."

Redd casually noodled on the keyboard as Greyson continued to listen. His meanderings led him into an old jazz standard that had been playing on that other night in the bar. Redd toyed with the rhythm, tested new harmonies, let his right hand run freely across the bridge. A strange interval here, an awkward delay there - process and exploration, divots and sketch marks and the charm of unabashed dissonance.

"I've said it once, and I'll say it again sober." Greyson spread his hands in a questioning manner. "Why the hell are you cooped up in here instead of out on that stage?"

"Lucas hasn't asked me to perform."

"Have you ever asked him for the chance?"

"This is his place, not mine - especially not to make that sort of noise."

"Neither is this practice room. You're brilliant. You belong in the spotlight. Get out there and take it."

"I don't want to take it from someone else." Redd looked away. "Someone who deserves it."

"And you don't?"

Lucas loved to know people well enough to surprise and delight them, seemingly even better than they knew themselves. Redd thought he might pick up on his music practice as he had done with the library key, with the ram's horn mask of soft white and rich blue and a reassuring sort of dignity that had him standing even taller at the odd glance in a mirror. But Lucas never commented on Redd's playing, much less extended any opportunity. Perhaps it was all wrong for his tastes - or in general, as per that inner critic that might never be silenced.

Greyson's pocket chimed, and he dug out his phone with a grumble about who the fuck wasn't just texting him instead. He glanced at the display, jumped to his feet. "Got to go. I'm being summoned." A closing step, a firm hand on Redd's shoulder - "Good show. Much appreciated."

"You're welcome." Redd smiled. "Always."

Redd settled into the calm strains of Pachelbel's Canon in the lingering memory of Greyson's touch. Simply to start, elegant and spare as he had learned it so early on. Then his own arrangement, patiently gathered arpeggios and grace notes and layers of resonant harmony. Redd trailed up to the finale, then off into a delicate scattering of notes - and slow applause from the doorway.

"Back for the encore, Greyson?"

A finely edged voice, savoring every word. "But isn't this merely the opening act?"

Redd identified his new audience even before he turned his head to see the severely tailored suit, the raven hair sleek in its low ponytail, the hooded and aquiline gaze that could pierce diamond.

Lucas.

* * *

Greyson strolled into Thanos' office with a jaunty swing of his briefcase. So he had been dragged away from Redd with fuck all notice before he could propose to share more than just drinks. And the sodding old strawberry must fancy himself the center of Greyson's universe to pull his strings like this, as if he had been moping about for a call from that shriveled and pompous voice. But Thanos would hardly be wasting that precious breath of his just to piss all over Greyson's work again, especially if said work had gone as far upstream as it must have for this second chance to happen in the first place.

Thanos had cleared his desk and laid out the reconnaissance photos in a ruler straight grid. He fixed Greyson with that glacial stare, daring him to crack under its chill. Greyson kept his confident silence. Thanos had called him. Thanos had brought him here. Thanos had something to say, and he could damn well go ahead and get on with it.

"Opulent manor, absent owner, sneaky little convict scampering about unsupervised." Thanos looked as knowing as a judge about to hand down a sentence. "I expected you'd luck into some of this."

Greyson waited, unbothered by the twin insults of epithet and underestimation.

"And then you'd clean it all out. Scrape it dry. Run off to your next mark with more money than sense and a soft spot for sob stories. Human nature takes its course, does it not?"

Greyson fought the urge to smile as his own sort of disagreement.

"Indeed you looked, but you didn't touch. Not one coin or note or statement. Not even a pencil or a paper clip. Lucas kept his records, and he counted it all." Thanos gripped the arms of his wheelchair. "Twice."

A small and petty voice had been nagging at Greyson for leaving Lucas' cash stacks as they were, demanding to know the next time he would see so much money all in one place, hatching its own plans to sneak back and skim a smidge - especially if this meeting fell flat as the prior one. The vindication of honesty washed over him like the ocean, leaving that old instinct to sputter as Thanos must have done at this conclusion.

"He called the banks, asked about the account numbers on his paperwork and the fakes mixed in just for safety. No access attempts. No balance inquiries. No poking or prodding whatsoever." Thanos' eyes thawed just a touch. "It's almost as if you weren't lying about your intentions."

Of course that would be put as a negative, but it was at least a point in Greyson's favor.

"Or perhaps you were, and we'll know that truth a few months down the road. But here you are on film - the clear and primary suspect." Thanos gestured at the photo array with a deliberate and bony hand. "And since this all seems a bit more than lucky, perhaps you aren't quite that stupid."

Another point in the winning column, another begrudging concession disguised as an insult.

"So perhaps you might be worth troubling myself with. You had called me to talk about security matters - something in need of renovation." Thanos pressed on before Greyson had any chance to reply. "Well?"

"The surveillance cameras in the casino aren't doing their job. They don't see all that they need to."

"Those hideous things? You want to install even more of them?"

Greyson brightened at this crack in Thanos' shell. "I want to replace them."

"With what? Even worse?"

"With something that blends in - or hides. It depends on how the geometry works out, where we can drill -" Greyson cut himself off. "Point is, I want to do better. I can do better. And it will look better. Easily."

"I'd sooner rip them all out if Lucas wouldn't think I was losing my facilities. Beastly boxes, slapped in by simpletons." Thanos looked off with a frown. "That crown molding predates the Great War. A bespoke design by a master carver. Those dunderheads just drilled right through it. What do you think of that, now?"

"Sounds like a waste of art."

"And disrespect for the artist. For me as well, since this was all done over my head after I was foolish enough to provide blueprints."

"Can I say that this time will be different?"

"You can flap your gums as you wish. But perhaps it will, won't it?" Thanos slowly scanned back over Greyson's photos, pointing to a panel disguised in beadboard. "My father installed this. He took such care to make it seamless. And you just waltzed into that hallway and opened it?"

Greyson swallowed a lie about the seam being obvious as a sidewalk crack. "After a while up and down on both sides."

"This was my doing. A private passage." Thanos indicated the bookcase door. "Which you've only just scratched the surface of - no, that's not an invitation in the slightest. And this." The office safe behind the Mucha. "Tell me Lucas wasn't daft enough to write the combination nearby."

Greyson wanted to ask why Thanos had been daft enough to put said safe in a hiding spot right out of a cartoon. "That was all me. Patience and graph paper." Which he had saved in case proof was needed. "Have a look?"

"No, no. I've seen enough. Perhaps you aren't so common after all." Thanos took a long and pensive pause. "And perhaps I can humor you - just this once, mind - if those walls must be flayed yet again."

"It would be more of a precision surgery."

"So you claim."

"So I've shown. How many marks did I leave? Crowbar dents, drill holes?"

"Nothing but your cards, from what Lucas reported."

Greyson raised his eyebrows, the closest he would allow himself to a shrug on this tightrope.

"All right, all right. I suppose we can arrange to continue this conversation. I hardly believe I'm consenting to this." A mutter, just audible - "Perhaps I am going senile at last."

Greyson took a bow before he left the office. "Glad to be in agreement."

* * *

Redd expected Lucas to do what he usually did upon the rare happenstance in the music halls. Name the piece and composer he had overheard the tail end of, share a slice of trivia about its history or meaning. Suggest another work of potential interest, offer to set it out from the extensive collection of manuscripts. Encourage Redd to keep his chin up and keep plugging away - then vanish off to his own matters on a turn of pointed heel.

The applause was new, as was Lucas' proposal to take a break and a walk after ensuring that Redd was all right to step away from his practice. Near an abstract painting of a bass clef boldly rendered in blue and orange, Lucas slid away a section of chair rail to reveal a keyhole. Only as he unlocked the door did Redd notice its seam, a near flawless match for the striped wallpaper. It opened into the office Greyson had described on their drive back to Norwich after his own foiled attempt to show it off, and Redd felt a thrill of crossing worlds as he followed Lucas into his inner sanctum.

Lucas gestured grandly at a chair of green and gold silk in the sitting area, then turned to a liquor cabinet as Redd situated himself. "Brandy? Gin? Or are you more of a whisky man like Clay?"

"We do share that taste." Redd refrained from adding a disclaimer about the quantity. "Though not this close to our shifts."

"What shift? You're off tonight."

"I wasn't aware."

"Neither was I until I decided as much just now." Lucas smiled, his obsidian eyes conspiratory. "I'll ensure that the memo is passed along."

"What's going on? Is there some sort of trouble?"

"The trouble is that you're shaking on the edge of your seat. I can't imagine why." Lucas poured two fingers of whisky in a crystal glass and handed it to Redd with a coaster and a chuckle. "Relax. Enjoy. Drink up, why don't you?"

Redd gingerly set the liquor on the small table beside him. "I'd rather like to know what I'm drinking to."

"An occasion worthy of demarcation with libation. Naturally."

"What sort of occasion?"

"Patience, patience. Savor the mystery." Lucas sat in the adjacent chair, took a whiff and a nip from the snifter he had just fixed himself. "Where's the joy in showing your full hand at once?"

Redd gave in and drank, allowing himself to hope that he might be in for a treat. And already was, given the velvety smoothness of this whisky, its kaleidoscopic melange of caramel and vanilla and citrus notes lingering on his tongue. Some rarity that must fetch a heavy price - and Redd gulped his next mouthful, a scorching waste in the back of his throat, with the sense that this was his own for some unknown favor. His horned mask had been presented in a gift box, his library key in an upraised palm, both as asides in public spaces. This personal chat could very well be something more - or something else entirely.

"Pappy Van Winkle, Kentucky's finest. Hell and damnation to source outside some very particular channels." Lucas nodded at the bottle atop the liquor cabinet. "Would you care to take it home with you?"

"If you'll care to tell me what this is all about."

"Just a small token of shared wealth, a souvenir of my past month's wanderings through the American south. Have you ever been?"

"Can't say I've had that chance."

"That's a pity. New Orleans is uniquely historical. Cultural. Musical. Magical." Lucas looked off at a vintage Carnival poster that neatly summarized his love of the Brutale's speakeasy aesthetic and the masquerades it played host to. "Figuratively - and perhaps even literally as well."

Redd began to relax into the warmth of his whisky. "So the city cast its spell on you?"

"It does have its charms, and not just in the voodoo sense, though I've brought some of those back as well - all in the name of luck, you know. Those all conspired to keep me away for so long." Lucas' gaze softened as it shifted to a portrait of a woman on his desk. "Though also in splendid company."

Redd enjoyed a languid sip as he waited for Lucas to continue.

"I attended this party - a business obligation. Friend of an associate, that sort of deal. It was dreadful. All flash and no substance, crowds with no camaraderie. Noise without a single note of harmony."

"Sounds like the first and last one I went to at uni. Booze and boredom." And fending off hands three sheets to the wind and nowhere they needed to be, then a week's worth of pestering from his flatmate for coming home alone that night instead of getting the act done and over with for its own sake.

"Indeed. The drink is no fun when it loosens dull tongues. So I did my time, endured my chitchat, waited for my chance to escape. As I had my hand on the front door, the music began, and the crystalline voice of a siren called me back. I turned. I looked. I succumbed." Lucas raised his glass. "And I left with Miss Tequila Belle on my arm."

"That's quite a story." Doubtlessly embellished, nonetheless appealing in its romantic grandeur.

"She's quite a talent. World class, even if the world is not yet aware."

"When do you think it will be?"

"Perhaps next month, perhaps next year. Eventually, nonetheless." An impish hint of smile. "I have plans."

Redd saw no point in asking after the details, just as he had given up on trying to peek under the curtain of this conversation. Surely he had been brought in here for more than just a slug of whisky and a short story to go along with it. Even so, that was already more than he had expected - the most ever shared with him by a man who had remained an enigma throughout seven years' employment. And it really was some damn fine liquor.

"On that note, I have some for you as well. You have quite the large shoes to fill, Redd. Physically and professionally."

Redd's sip became a gulp as he swallowed a seed of worry.

"I hate to be losing you like this, but I know you'll recommend the best to take your place. And I'll know they're the best, as you were the one to train them."

Removed from his shift with talk of replacement, and a fancy gift to boot - no. It couldn't be. "Where exactly am I going?"

Lucas held his tongue, enjoying his drink - and, from the looks of it, the quaver that had crept into Redd's voice. At length he threw his head back and laughed.

"To the masquerade, of course, with your table well covered. Where else would I send my newest head croupier to celebrate his promotion?"

Redd was aware that his mouth had fallen open, and he shut it before he spit out a crack about Lucas' magnificent bastardry. He felt gut punched twice over, dizzy and frustrated and elated - spun around a roulette wheel just to land on the jackpot.

"And of course you'll be bringing a guest. Who will have the privilege of joining you?"

"Clay. You should hear the noise he's made about these parties over the years."

"He's already spoken for. I couldn't leave him to languish in that back room while Trinity has all the fun." Lucas gestured with his snifter. "Is there someone else? Someone of particular interest to you?"

Too much. Too soon. Too obvious. Oh, hell, why not?

"Greyson."


	4. What Dreams May Come

"T minus fifteen minutes to party." Clay cast a sidelong glance from the driver's seat. "You can unclench yourself any time you want, bruv."

"I'm fine. Just fine. Ready as I'll ever be." Redd tried to arrange himself more casually without bumping his knees into the underside of the dash yet again. "What makes you think otherwise?"

"You've been sitting like this since we left." Clay pulled himself up into a comedically prim posture, mouth hanging open as if he were just licensed and constantly on edge about wrecking the car. "Like you're about to go in for an arse exam instead of the time of your bloody life."

Redd had a thrill at Clay's unwittingly suggestive phrasing, the thought of how those two concepts might be one and the same, of the familiar face he was about to see once again after three weeks and as many hours apart. Beneath a mask he had kept under lock and key, in those exact terms - but over a free and clear weekend in a full house of untold temptation.

"Think about it. Wander through the place with some blinding good drink in hand, get a load of the masks and the music and all that crazy rich bollocks flying around. Play a round or three, play at being a high roller for a bit. And Lucas made some noise about a special guest. Lady Belle, forget her name - some brilliant singer from across the pond." Clay grinned. "Guessing those two are a thing, but if they're not -"

Redd's phone buzzed, and he smiled himself at the brief yet tantalizing message. He and Greyson had shared a few drinks when his work at the Brutale wrapped up, then carried on with the odd item of interest. Piano performances that Redd studied to emulate, precise and emotive renditions of the most challenging works in his repertoire. Greyson's electronica of choice, layers of shifting harmony - a steady pulse of urban grit and glamor, the last gleam of twilight on steel and glass high above the hustle of the streets below. His invite to the masquerade, and pleasant surprise at Redd's own - as if Lucas had kept the requested discretion about its circumstances.

"What's so funny?" Clay asked.

"Nothing, really."

"Come on, bruv. Don't keep a good laugh all to yourself."

"Not a laugh. Just a hello."

"Anybody important?"

Redd refused to answer as a way of making Clay guess.

Clay snorted. "If that's Greyson, you owe me a shot from the top shelf." After a few moments without correction - "Well, fuck me sideways. What's he after you about?"

"He's here. There, rather. Taking a look around and all."

"How the - right. Lucas is as Lucas does. Why do I even ask?"

"Lucas." Redd felt the start of a smirk before he could think to hide it. "Of course."

Clay drove on in silence, his confused frown shifting into suspicion as Redd let him puzzle out the logical conclusion.

"You invited him?"

"I was asked to name a guest, and you were already taken care of."

"Not one of your old mates from uni. Or some bird who drops half her pay at your table every weekend. Or hell, even Mum or Dad." Clay laughed in disbelief. "Where's your head?"

Redd bit back an inquiry about which one. "Greyson is fun. I've told you that. He'll party enough for both of us if I feel the need to hibernate."

"Or he'll go strutting off to see what he can get his hands on."

Redd thought to remind Clay of Greyson's trustworthiness, of the new surveillance system just installed, of the honest appreciation he had grunted for its full coverage and sharp video and ease of reviewing footage. But when that cheeky boldness piped up again, he gave into the urge to let it slip.

"You know, that's not necessarily a problem."

"It's not?"

"It depends on what he's after, doesn't it?"

Clay scoffed. "No matter what, it's something that doesn't belong to him."

"But what if he's not actually taking it? Just - using it for mutual pleasure?"

A momentary squint, and Clay let out a guffaw. "Heh. Now that's a laugh."

"What is?"

"What sorry bird would want to have a screw with him? He'd brag the whole two minutes to make it feel like an hour."

Redd flushed fiercely. "You're thinking a bit too much about that."

"You brought it up in the first place."

"Not in that sort of detail."

"Still your subject, bruv. And you're looking a bloody lot like your name right now going on about it."

Redd measured his breaths as his face burned, needing no peek in the rear view mirror to see that he was lit up like the neon chasing the Brutale's bar in arcs and stripes and intricate geometry. He had long since kept his inclinations to himself, figuring they were his own to deal with and nothing for Clay to worry about wrapping his head around. If he met someone, fantastic - if not, he was content enough in his balance of work and gym and intellectual pursuits. But now there was Greyson, conspicuous even in his absence, somehow daring Redd to go on with the teasing as he undoubtedly would himself.

"All right. One more and I'm done."

Clay waited, eyes narrowed suspiciously as Redd allowed his sly grin to spread.

"Who says Greyson would be after a woman?"

"You tell me. You're the one who's been all up his -"

Clay furrowed his brow as if the hamster were climbing into its proverbial wheel. As if he were processing Redd's careful distance from the Brutale's usual brand of flirts, the friend from final year who had visited them over a long past holiday and slept elsewhere than the couch. The smiles escaping him whenever Greyson's name came up, the reflexive good word he put in - and now this invite, signed and stamped and delivered.

"Huh. Wow." Clay laughed nervously. "That explains a lot about everything."

Redd stayed silent in agreement.

"Took me long enough, didn't it? Guess I've had too many knocks to the head after all."

"I didn't exactly spell it out for you."

"You could have just bloody told me. You know I've got no problem with that." Clay pointed to a dent in his head received while pulverizing a bigot who had been slurring an acquaintance of theirs. "And you know you'll always be my little bruv."

"Even if you don't always get along with -" Redd trailed off, afraid to ruin anything before it began by making it sound official.

"I'll try. Can't say I'll manage, but I'll give you that."

The drive passed in silence until Clay and Redd pulled up to the Brutale, idling in the driveway to unload their suitcases and hand the car over for weekend parking. They smoothed out the wrinkles of the road, neatened their respective silk ties, and retrieved their masks from the back seat.

"Of all the blokes in this world." Clay slipped on his luchador mask of rage red and ice blue. "Why the fuck does it have to be him?"

Just done tying on his horns, Redd turned to him with a smile. "Why not?"

* * *

As per the poem frothing all over its invite, the package claimed to be Greyson's reward for a job well done. Instead it stabbed him with an icepick of deja vu. He had once gone to such a party at the same sort of venue - an estate house strewn with art and artifacts and servants' passages, with posh fools deep in their cups and blathering on about their latest handful of pence fucked out of the poor sod at the arse end of some business deal. And so the treasure was a sitting duck for the hunter, the path clear for escape. A swipe from the curio shelf, a dash down secret stairs, a slip around the furnace to an old door long since locked - and the coal tunnel ended in a blank wall instead of somewhere outside on the property, leaving Greyson to slowly turn and raise his hands into the sweeping torches summoned by the silent alarm.

Maybe Lucas had not dug into the particulars of Greyson's arrest, which had never come up during their brief chats throughout the consultancy. Maybe this mask of riveted metal, with a pin latch down its nose and a jaunty brass padlock to top it all off, was to show off his locksmithing skills rather than brand him as a prisoner. Maybe Greyson ought to just swagger into this soiree like any other, work it as he saw it and get his pleasures on - especially with a particular someone who had acted like this offer was a foregone conclusion.

While said someone was on his way, Greyson set about settling in. He took a Venomous Vial - some spicy house twist on a gin fizz - from a passing waiter, then the last seat at the busiest blackjack table. Server and croupier both wore white masks painted up with suits and numbers of playing cards. As did most of the staff, apart from the lion running craps, the sequined sun in the cashier's cage, and a couple of others Greyson pegged as some top class of old guard. Maybe Redd had been wearing his own mask - which he had kept a secret, as if anyone that tall could ever hide under a thing of the sort - long before this weekend.

"Mr. Grayson! Pleased to meet you. I've been told to keep an eye out and an empty seat." Four of Hearts smiled. "To cut you a deal, so to speak."

"Much appreciated." Greyson bought in with a brisk nod and no need to ask who had informed her. "It's good to see such a welcoming hand."

"And what did I get? A slap in the face, that's what." Greyson's neighbor - a squat and braying sort in a boar's head mask, an ill-fitting suit in drab mustard, and a stale cloud of cheap smoke. "Little birdie, do you know who I am?"

"Of course I do. Very well, in fact." Four of Hearts spoke with a familiar dryness that had Greyson swallowing a smile. "Keep your trousers on, Mr. Cobb."

Mr. Cobb squinted through his beady eyeholes long enough for Greyson to think the riposte was meant literally. At last he placed his bet with a harrumph and no apparent concern for the wallet poking out of his jacket flap. As his hand began to twitch with that old compulsion, Greyson glanced up at the small camera blended into the casino ceiling. Stopped by his own good work - and the satisfaction in that irony almost made him glad to let this boorish bastard go. As did a locking of eyes with Thanos as he rolled on past, his cool stare almost approving through his blueprint mask.

Greyson played a few rounds, stopped on a win, got up and back into the gathering crowd already well into its swing of revelry. Up a hallway outside the casino, he caught an amusing flash of light brown hair cascading over black satin. A woman in a slinky feathered dress and green butterfly mask was meddling with the lock to the surveillance room, trying to pick it. With her hairpin, nonetheless, as Greyson realized when he strolled up with a grinning shake of his head.

Apparently unnoticed, Greyson watched for a few moments before speaking. "What makes you think that will work?"

"What makes you think it won't?"

Greyson went to hand over one of his cards before spotting the covered eyes of her mask and a cane propped against the wall. "If I can toot my own horn for a moment, I'm somewhat of an expert."

"Care to help me out, then? Or will you keep those skilled hands all to yourself?"

"That depends on what you're trying to do here."

"Open this door? Even I could see that from where you're standing."

"But you do know what's in there, right?"

"Of course. The private loo - very nice, all posh and potpourri." Butterfly shrugged delicately. "That I just happened to lose my key to on the way over."

"Right. Then I'm the King of Spain." Greyson snorted. "And you'll be in a mess of trouble if you do get in there."

"Perhaps not a mess. More so just a taste." A cryptically teasing smile. "Which is the whole point, after all."

Butterfly knew a hell of a lot that Greyson did not, and she was showing her hand just enough for him to see no harm in humoring her. And to try the hairpin, just for shites - which surprisingly worked, and he cursed under his breath at failing to discover the weakness of this lock beforehand as she declared victory for having told him so.

A shadow loomed over Greyson's shoulder, and he turned around into a familiar pinstriped bulwark in a screaming red and blue mask. Greyson flinched, expecting a verbal shitstorm and a second shower from one of the drinks Clay was holding. Instead Clay handed Butterfly hers, sipping his own - which looked like a seltzer and lime - as he cracked a wry smile.

"Heh." Clay took the hairpin from Greyson. "I didn't even have to ask who started it."

"Since when did you ever?" Butterfly joked.

"Since this bloke here came to work with us. Greyson Grayson - ex, uh, expert in security. Trinity Carrington, one brilliant sculptor." Clay beamed, starting to look like something that might be considered handsome. "My fiancee."

"I thought you were keeping hush hush about that." Trinity gave Clay's arm a playful slap. "To make a big deal of it. A grand announcement."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's all right by me either way. I'm fine to just go down to the register office, but Mr. Romance here - anyhow. I've heard your name before." Trinity turned to Greyson with a wicked edge on her voice. "You're that cheeky little git who's out to fuck."

Clay flushed, inadvertently mirroring the heat in Greyson's own face. "That's not what I said. Well, not all of it."

Trinity smiled. "It's close enough, though, isn't it?"

Seize the awful. Make it amazing. "It could be." Greyson tilted his head, took hold of his chin as if pondering the very nature of his existence. "So where's Redd getting off to right now?"

Clay processed this little exchange as Trinity leaned on her cane with a smirk. "He's upstairs - not ready to come out just yet. I mean go down. I mean -" Clay took a gulp of his drink, nearly sputtering as he swallowed.

"You mean he doesn't quite know how to handle himself?" Greyson asked.

Clay nodded, doing enough of a tomato impression for Greyson to wonder about what Redd might have let on to him, and whether he could stand to take another hit of liquid courage before they met again.

"Sounds like I should go sort him out."

"Yeah. Go ahead. You do that, mate." Clay pounded Greyson on the shoulder. "Take good care of my little bruv, right?"

Greyson smiled. "Right."

* * *

Redd told himself to knock it off with the shyness, to get his silly arse downstairs already, to quit boggling at this guest chamber with its lush carpet and marble washroom and canopy bed that he could fully stretch out on with room to spare. Greyson was here. Greyson was waiting for him. Greyson might very well have run into Clay, whose past offerings of subtle hints toward romance had Redd taking a long look at the complimentary liquor cabinet as he checked his horns once more in the gilded mirror.

On his way downstairs, Redd detoured into the practice room for a different sort of anodyne. A song or two to settle his nerves, to set his mood for the party. To dip a toe into its intrigue rather than dive right into the deep - elating though it might be when it swallowed him whole.

Redd drifted through a warmup of chord progressions before stumbling upon the road to Scarborough Fair. The song told of impossible challenges thrown at a hopeful lover, and Redd played with the trust of beating such odds rather than the usual tone of scorn and futility. He began to sing along softly, true love's pronoun as desired, with no real concern of being overheard - making a wish for this weekend ahead.

Redd still jumped when a shadow darkened the doorway, bouffanted and curvaceous in a column sheath of purple satin. Tequila Belle swanned into the room, platinum upsweep easily recognized above her feathered mask of grandly flagged notes and stylized sheet music. She had the presence and poise of a West End headliner, and Redd braced himself for the attitude to follow.

Instead Tequila spoke in a casual and honeyed drawl. "Are you feeling all right over there? You look like you've just seen a ghost."

"I'm fine, Ms. Belle. Just a bit startled, that's all."

"Tequila. There's no need to be so formal in here. Didn't mean to spook you, Mr.-"

"Rockridge. Redd." He stood up to meet Tequila for a handshake. "First name basis as well."

"Good to meet you, Mr. Redd. Can I ask how you knew my name?"

"Lucas showed me your portrait when he told me about his travels."

"Lucas." Tequila spoke his name as a dreamy sigh. "I shouldn't be surprised. He's been talking me up to anyone who will give an ear."

"From the way he described your voice, it sounds like he has good reason to."

"That's exactly my point. Everyone's going to be expecting the world from me." Tequila's words carried a hint of nervous laughter. "I only hope I can deliver so much as half of that."

"You'll deliver all of it. Trust me."

"Nice of you to say that though you haven't even heard me sing. Have you?"

"No, not yet. But I have it on good authority that I'm somewhat of an optimist."

"I'm glad somebody is. Tomorrow night's my big show, and I don't even know what I'm singing." Tequila looked off toward the door. "Or who will be playing for me."

Redd started to ask if Tequila had been expecting someone else, to express surprise that Lucas had not already set her up with an accompanist, to doubt his own abilities because he had done nothing of the sort since his stint with the Southampton University jazz orchestra and the odd gig for a voice student after he bowed out of that to focus on his coursework. Instead he took a breath and went for it.

"I am."

"You are?"

"If you want me to. If it's all right and all. I mean, I'll be more than happy to -"

Tequila cocked a playful hip. "Mr. Redd, are you propositioning me?"

"Strictly in the professional sense."

"Well, on that note, if you'll pardon the pun - I'd say we can take those hands of yours for a test spin."

Redd made a show of flexing his fingers. "All revved up and ready to go. Did you have anything specific in mind?"

"I have too many things and nowhere to start." Tequila chuffed delicately. "And not the faintest clue as to what this crowd wants to hear."

"They want to hear you. That's what's most important. I can't see them being fussed about the details."

"If you say so."

Redd borrowed a particular line, delighting in the relief it brought to Tequila's pensive and painted mouth. "I know so."

"You do? Or is that just your optimism talking?"

"Perhaps some of both, but anyhow. What do you want to sing? Right here, right now? Let's start there."

"If you put it like that, there is this one -" Tequila looked wistful. "But I think I'd better warm up first, don't you?"

Redd nodded, startling with pleasure as Tequila hit her opening note without needing to ask him for a reference. Her voice was piercing and pure, chilling in its precision even as it smoothed into full readiness. Redd had heard his share of singers of this caliber, their energy of live performance. Still a tear welled in his eye as Tequila went on ahead with her runs and jumps and scales, with solfege melodies showing those first hints of emotion.

"There you go again." Tequila smiled as Redd realized his mouth was hanging open. "I'm starting to think this room just might be haunted."

"No, that was all you."

"That was a compliment, I hope?"

"Of course. So what was this song you had in mind?"

"It's one I've loved since I was a little girl, a piece of home I keep with me. But I don't know if you'll know it." Tequila glanced down. "And it's a little too country regardless."

"Too country for what?"

"For performing in a place like this. I'm not sure my roots should be showing, if you catch what I'm trying to say."

Redd wanted to say that Tequila's roots were just fine, that they made her who she was, that such personal influence was to be expected and welcomed in art. These thoughts all jumbled into the verbal equivalent of an awkward pat on the back - a bit much for a new acquaintance.

"I thought we were taking a test drive." Redd smiled. "Not heading out on the road just yet."

"That we are."

"Then here's another proposition for you. Go ahead and sing your song. If I know it, I'll play along. If not, we can work it out afterward."

Tequila took a skeptical moment before drawing herself up into her formal posture. Redd did not recognize the pleasant folksiness of her lyrics or melody, nor did he see any point in guessing its chord progression. He was content to listen, hands resting on the keyboard, as Tequila's voice swelled with longing, her gaze so distant it seemed to reach back west across the ocean.

> The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home  
>  ’Tis summer, the loved ones are gay  
>  The corn top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom  
>  While the birds make music all the day  
>  The young folks roll on the little cabin floor  
>  All merry, all happy, and bright  
>  By and by hard times comes a-knocking at the door  
>  Then my old Kentucky home, good night!
> 
> Weep no more, my lady  
>  Oh! weep no more today!  
>  We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home  
>  For the old Kentucky home, far away

Tequila trailed off, looking away with some shyness before Redd had a chance to speak. "Like I said. Country."

"I thought that was lovely."

"I'm glad, because my home sure is. Have you ever been?"

"To Kentucky? Can't say I have - or across the pond for that matter." Redd remembered why the name sounded familiar. "But I like what I've had of the whisky."

"You ought to get a load of my uncle Beauregard's moonshine." Tequila laughed. "Or not, if you expect to get anything done the rest of the day."

"Do you know this from personal experience?"

"A lady doesn't sip and tell, now, does she?"

"Then a gentleman won't pry," Redd teased. "On the subject of getting things done - can you give me a hand with these chords?"

Redd sketched out the progression Tequila described, falling into the gentle rhythm of her earlier performance. He meandered in subtle steps beneath her longer notes, delved deep into bass to set off her soprano. When Tequila beckoned to Redd with a nod - then a cheery verbal encouragement after he failed to parse her gesture - he swallowed hard and joined her with a harmony of his own. His timbre was rough, his words halfway improvised, and yet Tequila's smile was brighter than ever.

Still that same old doubt crawled back in the silence of the aftermath. "Was that too simple? Too showy? Too -"

Tequila came close, resting the softest hand on his shoulder. "Too lovely, Mr. Redd."

* * *

Greyson popped on up to the second floor guest rooms, jogging up the grand staircase with no real mind to how funny he must look to be moving like this in a tailcoat. Clay was being civil, friendly even. Clay was sputtering red over the sort of innuendo he normally whipped out with deadpan machismo. And on the matter of Redd, encouraging - with no implication, spoken or otherwise, that Greyson was one misstep away from a signature Rockridge bruise cruise.

Redd was not in his room, nor had he left any messages on the phone Greyson had locked up in his own in favor of the classic charm of a pocket watch and a weekend free of electronic distraction. But Greyson had passed the first floor to the distant sound of a piano played with enough skill to be worth investigating. The pianist was masked like everyone else at the Brutale, in gilded white crowned with a royal blue pair of ram's horns, but his burly height and sense of style were clear enough in a sneak peek from the hall.

Greyson went to shake his tails, straighten his bow tie, stroll on in with a snappy and suggestive greeting. A woman's voice stopped his stride, and he felt a reflexive stab of jealousy as her silvery laughter mingled with the deep warmth of Redd's. She began to sing, stunningly sweet, and Greyson's avarice gave way to appreciation as he looked a bit closer, matching her with the portrait from Lucas' desk and various overheard rumors about tomorrow night's concert. This was a matter of business, its pleasure strictly platonic. Just a pair of artists polishing their act  - and soon to be sharing a spotlight.

A whisper slithered to Greyson's ear. "Entrancing. Enchanting. Intoxicating. No?"

Lucas appeared, dressed as his twin likenesses outside the casino. Here in the flesh, the feathers on his long coat were blood red, his eyes glittering above the beak of his mask with incisive glee.

"Jump a bit higher next time, why don't you?" Lucas chuckled. "For a man who lived so long in the shadows, you still seem to harbor such fear of them."

"More like I hate to be sneaked up on." Greyson snorted. "Who doesn't?"

"Beaten at your own game, you mean? I understand that frustration quite well."

Greyson bit his tongue, refusing to give the smug bastard any more ammunition to shoot back at him. Their past conversations had been more so altercations, even though they agreed on Greyson's proposed upgrades and the payment owed for his work. Lucas had to set the stage, strike up the band, run the show up through the last word. Lucas had to win - and maybe Greyson was better off not playing at all.

"The dazzling Tequila Belle, and the modest Redd Rockridge. I never expected a man of his nature to have such designs. As a performer, that is." Lucas smiled, a slight and calculated curvature of lips. "A wise man refrains from pursuing what isn't his to lay hands on."

The veiled insult - and its contrast with a rumored bit of Brutale history - jarred Greyson out of his impromptu vow of silence. "Says the man who won this place in a game of roulette."

"Perhaps I did, or perhaps that was my father. Or perhaps that was a mere expression for a fast and fortuitous deal."

"Whichever makes for the best story," Greyson finished, applying another scrap of knowhow picked up through osmosis.

"A man after my own heart, but I've long since been aware of that." Lucas beckoned for Greyson to follow him. "Come."

Greyson tried to decide whether this was more of a compliment or a crack as Lucas led them both down the hall and through the hidden office door Redd had described to him. He sat as invited as Lucas rummaged in his desk, closing the drawer with an expression of triumph as he held up a small square envelope.

"It's time I come clean about a little story of my own. Do you care to guess what that might be?"

Greyson did not.

"Cat burglar's got his own tongue, it seems." Lucas took out a bottle of gin. "A touch of nip to loosen it up?"

Greyson accepted a pour under the assumption that Lucas' private stash would make the stuff downstairs seem bathtub league, and that he might very well need it to get through this little chat. Its fine bouquet, herbs and pine with delicate earthy notes, began to soothe the sting of getting hauled away from Redd and in here for who the hell knew what Lucas still wanted with him.

"Your invite to this ball, your mask bespoke by a Venetian master. I presented them both as a reward for your work." Lucas gave the envelope a twirl in his fingers, handed it to Greyson. "That's not the entirety of the truth."

Greyson popped the wax seal with its swirled monogram stamp, sliding out a single instant photo. He closed his eyes before turning it over, and his mouth opened along with them.

"You've been upfront with me, honest. A good egg, so to speak. It's only natural that you deserve the same."

Good was the barest start of it - stunning still a vast understatement. The porcelain egg was adorned in gold swirls and fronds over shimmering green, with floral garlands of platinum and diamond. Greyson had seen such a thing up close and personally in just one place. Not this exact thing - but so rare, so exquisite, so similar in design it was almost too much of a coincidence -

"Where could this treasure be?" Lucas mused. "Here or there, or anywhere? Berwick Hall, perhaps - who can say either way?"

Greyson flinched before he could force himself to keep a straight face. Lucas knew, and knew it all. Invited him here to work - not in spite of that, but because of it. Daring him to slip, his fingers to stick to his own personal sword of Damocles, whatever form it might take. Skimmed bills, siphoned stocks, sneaked gemstones - or this handful of rococo ruin. A perfect fit for Greyson's palm, just as the cuffs had snapped around his -

"You bloody roland," Greyson breathed. "You radio ratfuck. You -"

"You say that as if it's a problem."

"What are you doing to me?"

"Treating you, of course, to a friendly diversion. A party game for one. Or two?" Lucas made a show of his palm, offering a folded piece of paper. "It's up to you."

Greyson reached out for the paper despite himself, tucked it in his pocket unopened instead of giving this cryptic fuck the satisfaction of any response. A game for two - but how? Was this a cruel joke of Lucas' after all, a contest he would win by default when Greyson took the first move? Or did he know the one person Greyson might trust to talk this over with - and why?

"Sort it out. Work it out. Enjoy. Now, if you'll forgive my rudeness -" Lucas checked his watch. "I have a lady to meet and a grand entrance to make. I trust you can see yourself downstairs."

Lucas disappeared back into the hall, leaving Greyson to settle his hammering heart.

* * *

Redd and Tequila made it through a favorite jazz standard of his, one of hers, and another American folk song before the clock tower rang five and she excused herself for being late to some other rendezvous. They had chemistry. They had rhythm. Tomorrow they would develop their set list, rehearse, perform - much to the delight of a certain fellow who had been after Redd to take such a shot, and who Redd was long overdue for meeting with himself.

But first another sort of shot to soften this cloud of nervous euphoria. Redd stopped off for the latest brainstorm of Alistair the bartender, who went by Ace - and, with his staffer's mask, as the Spades thereof on party weekends. Normally Redd was one for smooth whisky, leaving the peated stuff to Clay and his personal brand of machismo. The blurb on the chalkboard called to his sense of adventure. And to a good end, as the smoky sweetness of the Phoenix Plume was a feather on Redd's tongue rather than a bitter coating of guano.

A debonair flash captured the stool to Redd's left, all broad green lapels and pinstriped bow tie and beard fully curled as with an iron. Greyson's mask was an elaborate cap of metal crowned with an oversized padlock, and he leaned an elbow on the bar as he looked Redd over through pentagonal eye holes.

"Go ahead. You know you want to."

Redd doubted Greyson was giving him the green light for that in public. "Want to what?"

"To say the obvious. My mask. My head. A double case of chrome dome." Greyson shrugged. "When nature's a bastard, you might as well have a laugh."

"I'm surprised you didn't have one on me first."

"As to how horny you look right now? That's just a little too easy."

"If you come up with a better one, I'd like to hear it."

"Maybe after I get something else of yours." Greyson caught Ace's attention. "Whatever he's having, make it two." Flashing Redd's wallet before his own eyes as he only just noticed the pull from his back pocket - "And put them both on me."

Redd snorted as Greyson handed back his billfold and offered his own instead, leaving Ace to take it all in stride. "What else are you planning to take from my trousers?"

"Nothing - at least not right now." Greyson eyed an empty pair of seats at a small table. "Though I did want to show you something from mine."

They took their drinks and claimed their spot, and Greyson reached into his own pocket and removed a small envelope. Redd noted the cracked wax seal, opened it up, slid out an instant photo of some splendid green and gold and bejeweled egg along with a folded piece of paper. Lucas had mused aloud about a particular something for Greyson, a special sort of surprise, and Redd had figured that must be his mask. But this -

"I can't say if this is real. Or if it's even here. For all I know, Lucas could have gone and snapped this at a museum." Greyson took a gulp of his drink. "But if it is here - and it is real -"

"You want me to help you look for it?"

"I want you to keep me from doing anything stupid. Such as taking the damn thing before I get Lucas' written guarantee that it's mine, free and clear. Because if it's not -" Greyson slapped an invisible handcuff on his wrist.

Redd's stomach began to knot. "Then why look in the first place? Why tempt yourself? Why not just bin all of this - or, hell, go and burn it?"

"If it is here, and it is mine - do you have the damndest clue what these sell for? What I could get out of some other rich nutter who feels the need to own one?" Greyson dropped his voice to a whisper. "Millions."

Perhaps Greyson was, as Clay had previously insisted, one step away from a hard fast slide back to prison. Perhaps he was more so the same from retirement. In either case, he trusted Redd to keep him from falling. Alone with him in secret as his face lit up with a sly smile, his eyes with epiphany, his voice with that satisfied rumble of a laugh. Breathing in his cologne and beard oil, daring to lay a hand on his arm - or his shoulder - perhaps to glide up the back of his neck -

"All right."

Greyson nodded at the folded paper. "I haven't touched this, I swear. If I was going to ask you to help me, I thought you should be the one to see it first."

Redd opened the paper, squinted at its tight neat printing. He laughed.

"What?"

Redd read the writing aloud. "This is not a clue."

"What is it, then? Blank? Bloody Lucas. I should have known."

"I read it as I read it." Redd handed Greyson the paper. "Look."

Greyson did, shaking his head with a snort. "You weren't joking."

"I told you. So what does this mean? Where do we even start?"

Greyson looked off, mouth set in thought. He downed his cocktail, decisively struck the glass back on the table. "I have an idea."

* * *

Greyson and Redd made their way through the great hall where a jazz combo coolly accompanied Lucas and Tequila's grandiose display of mingling. No one was in the library to notice their trip through the bookcase - let alone Lucas, who would doubtlessly be out for the rest of the evening and perhaps some on top of that.

"Lucas gave me that envelope in his office. Then he made a fuss about leaving and said to see myself downstairs." Greyson gazed around the private parlor, idly stroking his beard. "Seems he wants me to search around here."

"For what? That bit of paper is a reference to a surrealist painting - a pipe that says it isn't, because it isn't - not in the literal sense."

"Right. I know that one. Can't tell you who made it, but it is a good laugh."

"Should I go and look up the artist?" Redd turned to leave, thinking to run upstairs and get his phone. "Try to find some other work of theirs, or something else similar?"

"Go bonkers - I won't stop you. But I'm not sure that's necessary."

Redd waited for Greyson to continue.

"What if it's not about that painting, or that artist? What if it's just about some sort of fake?"

Redd scanned over the artwork on the walls, the porcelain vases on the mantel, the finely carved furniture. "Are you meant to be an expert on all of this?"

"I don't think so. Maybe just one thing in particular. Something suspicious."

"In what way?"

"Something new, or different, or out of place - never mind. I'm not going to remember every damn detail from last time I was through here. I'm lucky if I'm good for a few." Greyson sighed. "Let's just hope I know it when I see it."

All seemed ordinary in the parlor, the small formal dining room, and Lucas' office upstairs - at least from what Redd remembered through the haze of promotion and invitation and that rare wonder of whisky. In a glass curio cabinet was a massive pipe, carved in the shape of a lion's head. Greyson insisted on breaking in and having a look just for good measure. There was, in fact, a note - once again handed to Redd.

"Close, but no cigar." Redd groaned. "Of course it's not. It's a pipe."

Greyson had gone off to unlock a cabinet right after the end of the clue. A few minutes of rummaging, and he presented a cigar - or not, as he pinched it to show it was hollow. He opened an end and shook out a small paper cylinder. "Well, well, well. What do you say to this?"

"I've already had two, so I'd say it's your turn."

"If you insist." Greyson dramatically unrolled the note, puffed his chest up as if to give a proclamation. "A true blue clue for you." A thoughtful and distant look - and a satisfied pop up onto the toes of his opera shoes.

"What -"

Greyson was halfway down the spiral stairs by the time Redd realized he would rather show than tell. Redd caught him in the dining room, staring at shelves of pottery servingware - indigo on white, swirls and flowers and Dutch country landscapes.

"Bingo."

"What is it?"

"You'll see." Greyson pointed to a small item on the end of the highest shelf. "Get that down for me, will you?"

Redd had to stand on tiptoes to retrieve the target, a porcelain cube with a slit and no stopper. As he turned it over in his hands, paper slid inside with a dry whisper that echoed the implication crawling over his skin. Greyson could have brought over a chair to stand on, awkward as that might be with its soft upholstery. Or Lucas could have placed this piece with the assumption that Redd would be there to get it.

"Doesn't quite go with the dishes, right? This is a money box. An old school original. Cash goes in, cash sits tight. If you want to make a withdrawal -" Greyson carelessly tossed the cube up in the air, catching it at the last possible second before it crashed to the stone floor.

"Let me guess. This isn't old school."

"Or original." Greyson pulled a magnifying glass from his coat liner, scrutinized the piece. "Look."

Redd did. When he had first brought it down, the money box appeared hand painted. Up close, its brush strokes were comprised of tiny dots.

"Machine transfer," Greyson explained. "Usually done for plates and pots, but I guess windmills will sell just about anything. So." He presented the cube. "Want to do the honors?"

Redd went to say that he would rather not make a mess - but if Lucas was daft enough to put a clue inside a breakable, that was more so his problem than theirs. Even so, Redd tried to keep said mess minimal, striking a corner of the box on the floor to chunk it open without scattering the shards. Greyson extracted the paper with a gloved hand, and they read it together - slowly, patiently, triumphantly. 

> Humpty Dumpty was a fake Delft  
>  High atop the dining room shelf  
>  Humpty sought treasure but then took a fall  
>  Could he have been close to his prize after all?

Greyson and Redd looked at each other and then down. The stone floor was sturdy, the sideboard stocked with table linens. Behind it was an unused electrical outlet. With some effort, they scooted the cabinet back far enough for Greyson to get back there with his multitool - once again raising the question of how he would have managed this alone.

Redd watched from above as Greyson unscrewed the outlet cover, taking the plugs along with it. He held up this facade, then produced his torch - which, with some ceremony, he shone into the void beyond.

Greyson stayed silent for long enough that Redd began to ask if he was still breathing. The answer came in the form of a grumble.

"I should have known this was too easy."

Greyson reached into the wall and extracted his prize. It was an egg, all right - papier mache, green and swirled with gold. Redd halfway expected him to crush it or flatten it, to see how far it might bounce. Instead Greyson held up the egg with such a slow and exaggerated shrug that they both burst out laughing - perhaps more so with relief than amusement.

Greyson replaced the false outlet. He tucked the egg in some inner coat pocket, muttering a refusal to give Lucas the satisfaction of thinking he had failed to find it. Redd offered him a hand up and off the floor, which he took with a squeeze that lingered well after he got himself standing.

"Sorry about your egg."

"Don't be." Greyson neatened his tails, brushed the dust from his trousers. "You're not the silly bastard who set this up."

"Just the one who came along for the ride?"

"If you really must call yourself that." Greyson laid a warm hand on Redd's arm. "I'd rather think of you as a partner."

"Can I hold you to that?" Redd teased.

"I insist."


	5. A Night to Remember

"The peace preceding the party." Trinity sat back in her armchair, making a grand sweep with her teacup. "The calm before the storm."

"The lingering silence of slumber." Redd followed her gesture over the generous brunch buffet spread out in the great hall, the slow trickle of guests shuffling in to partake. Masked or not, in slacks and shirts like theirs, or suits and satin possibly left on from a very long night before. Or the rare case of slippers and bathrobe lucky to include pants underneath - though at least Trinity would be spared the indignity if such a wardrobe malfunctioned. "The throbbing heads of hangovers."

"Or some other excess of pleasure without relief."

"There I go, walking right into it again. One of these days, I'm going to trip and fall."

"Would you like to borrow my cane?"

"I would joke about borrowing your mouth to up the ante, but I've embarrassed myself enough." Redd sipped his coffee, which he had sweetened with sugar and cream and no concern about Clay busting his bollocks for somehow ruining it. "At least until I step on stage."

"Don't drive yourself mad about that. You'll be fine. Take a deep breath. Take a shot. Imagine the audience starkers." Trinity shrugged. "That's how I survived my first gallery opening."

Swallowing a comment about which particular audience, Redd pictured a brief flash of bold encore involving just that. Greyson's texts had been casual and noncommittal, links of interest and quick replies. Last evening he was all perusal and proximity, suggestive words lingering like the hand on Redd's back as he wished him good night without further invitation. Not that Redd had extended the same, nor did he fall into bed quite that easily - but the afterglow of masks and music and mischief was tempting him to reconsider.

"Right on, and I should know. I've been there before. But that was years ago, and a little voice in my head keeps adding them up to remind me."

"Oh, that wanker? I gave mine a name. Peter Prick, doubly a dick." Trinity took a long drink of tea. "So I can tell him to piss right off."

"Does it work?"

"Well enough for most things, not so much for others. Portfolio passed over for commission? A matter of stylistic preference. Passion piece I broke my arse on for months? Hard evidence of personal failure - even if it was for a contest at Hepworth Wakefield."

"Sorry to hear that. Tough crowd there?"

"The toughest. It was an honor to be shortlisted at all. I know that, and so does the rest of the sculpting world. But tell that to Sir Pee Pee."

Redd laughed. "That sounds like a playground insult."

"Then it's about right, isn't it? But anyhow, you're not entering a competition. You're putting on a show. Everyone's there to enjoy, not to rate you on a scale from one to ten."

"That's rather what I told Tequila yesterday when she was worrying about it."

"And did that work?"

Redd recalled how the nerves in Tequila's voice had given way to banter and laughter over that hour and some. "I think so."

"Then tell it to yourself. It will sink in eventually."

Clay returned from the buffet with a pair of loaded plates and an empty one for sharing, which he set on the small round table the three of them were seated at. "Hey."

Trinity smiled. "Hey."

"I got us one of everything. I'll eat what you don't want." Grimacing at an egg baked into a portobello cap - "Maybe not that."

"What is it?" Trinity asked. "A vegetable?"

"Close enough."

"It's a mushroom." Redd snorted. "That barely counts."

"It's what food eats." Clay began to serve himself said food, bangers and baked ham with an herbed scone. "That counts enough for me."

"What does your scone eat, then?"

"Little brothers who won't let me have a laugh."

"Or who ate all your broccoli so Mum wouldn't yell."

"And cauliflower. And sprouts." Clay shook his head. "I still don't know how you choke that all down."

"I don't." Redd had another of the aforementioned small cabbages, roasted with infused oil and garlic. "I enjoy it."

"I guess you do. No accounting for taste, huh?"

Greyson strutted into the hall, energetic and well rested in grey pinstripe trousers and a light purple waistcoat. He paused with a quick nod at Redd and the seat saved for him, then pivoted off to the buffet. On their way back through the library, the two of them had laughed about Lucas' daft joke of a treasure hunt. But Greyson's eyes were downcast, his quips about that damn egg laced with a touch of disappointment. He perked up at dinner with Clay and Trinity, at drinks and blackjack with Caitlin as the Four of Hearts Redd had once played himself and entrusted her to carry on with. Perhaps Greyson had put said egg behind him after all - or was making a good show of hiding otherwise.

"Green last night, and now this." Clay knocked back the rest of his coffee, which he had already been just short of guzzling. "Did he bring the whole rainbow with him?"

Redd raised a brow at the tan suit Clay insisted on wearing at this early hour, tie and cufflinks and all. "Perhaps just a new outfit like someone else I know."

"Don't give me that look. That was all Trin. Twisted my arm and everything."

"I did not," Trinity declared. "I put you in a headlock. A full Admiral Nelson."

Redd finished off the last of his sprouts. "A Horatio Hold?"

"A sleeper hold for you if you don't shut up about history. School's been out for fifteen years, bruv."

"For you, maybe." Trinity took a bite of her egg mushroom. "Some of us might like to learn a thing or two."

Greyson sat down with his brunch and tea, smelling of lavender as if matching his cologne and wardrobe. His knee brushed Redd's as he settled in with a long look. "And some of us might like to teach."

"Hairpins as lockpicks, right?" Trinity piped up in the wake of that remark. "How about that?"

"So you can go even more places you probably shouldn't?" Clay joked.

"It's a party, isn't it?" Trinity gestured at her face as if still wearing her butterfly mask. "I thought the whole point was to spread my wings."

"Tell that to those two, hiding out in the library at cocktail hour. Thought Greyson was going to have enough fun for both of you, bruv."

Greyson sneaked Redd a sly glance over their incomplete truth, agreed upon to keep it simple and consistent. "Maybe Redd's the better influence."

"Or maybe you were having your own sort of fun. You know." Trinity looked conspiratory. "Studying."

Redd got a kick over Greyson's eyes lighting up at her tone as Clay was beginning to redden. "Well, we were all alone in there."

Greyson continued. "With a lot to get into for a good long while."

"What will you get into today?" Trinity asked. "With Redd being tied up with Tequila and all."

"Take a stroll, see what's what, have a laugh at the worst of the aftermath." Greyson looked over at Mr. Cobb, shambling and bleary in his boar's head mask, alternating nips from a flask with bites of pastry stashed in his bathrobe. "Maybe drop in on practice if those two are all right with it. I'll play it by ear."

Redd nudged him with an elbow. "I'll remember that one next time you have a whack at my sense of humor."

"I'm going for poker." Clay rounded up his last scraps into a few quick forkfuls. "Got to get my name on the list before it runs all the way out the door."

Trinity smirked. "Then I've got to get winning elsewhere before you dig us straight through to the basement."

"Pfft. I'm not that bad."

"I'd agree with you if I weren't a worse liar."

"Confidence from my loved ones. Always nice to see." Clay laid a gentle hand over Trinity's before he stood up to leave. "Go on and get lucky. If you need me, you know where I am."

Greyson finished his tea as he watched Clay walk out of earshot. "How bad is he, really?"

"Why don't you go see for yourself?" Trinity asked.

"Maybe I will. It's not the worst sort of trouble I can get into around here."

"Then what is?"

Redd laid eyes on Greyson, found them met. "No comment."

"Looks like I beat you to it. Trouble, that is." Trinity had reached under her chair and come up empty. "Not quite the contest I wanted to win, at least not like this."

"What's wrong?" Redd asked.

"My handbag. I left it upstairs, keys and all. I need to go find Clay -"

Greyson pulled out a ring of picks, spun them with a jingle. "Say no more."

* * *

Greyson offered Trinity an elbow as she laughed off his admitted paranoia about leading her into a wall. She more so led him, half a step ahead as they swept out of the great hall and through the open floors of a casino still shaking off last night's slumber - except for Clay's poker table, already full and apparently injected with a healthy dose of caffeine.

Trinity's cane tapped the grand staircase before Greyson could warn her about it. She dropped his elbow for the handrail with a dare to race her up, taking off step by step as a question of fairness died on his tongue. To even the odds, Greyson turned around and went heels first. Still he pulled away enough for Trinity to take a poke at, both verbally and physically, as they rounded the first floor landing.

"You're not getting away from me that easily," Trinity teased.

Greyson volleyed it right back through the focus needed to move as he was without taking a bad step onto his arse. "What if I am? Backwards?"

"Then that's just like you, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"Showing off any chance you get."

Greyson snorted. "As if this was the first time you asked."

"In other words, I started it?"

"You said it." Remembering Clay's reaction to their lockpicking escapade - "And that's just like you, isn't it?"

"Is that a problem?"

"When I'm around?" Greyson chuckled. "It's a solution."

Greyson was first to the second floor, his prize a playful rap with the cane as Trinity found him and his elbow. When they stopped in front of her room, he flourished his picks with customary and audible panache - only to be held back just before he got started.

"Not like that. That's no fun."

"What is?"

Greyson had an idea even before Trinity reached up around the back of her head, undoing her bun and cheekily offering him a handful of pins.

"You really want me to use those."

"Only if you think you can handle it."

"I know I can. It's just not ideal. The job goes smoother with the right tool."

"And it's over before you know it. Talk about a blown opportunity." Trinity inquisitively cocked her head. "Didn't you just say you'd like to teach?"

Greyson found himself swelling with pride in his profession rather than the sort regarding the subject he had in mind with that remark. "I can show you a thing or two."

"Then let's hear it, professor."

"First off, the standard disclaimer. If you pick a lock the wrong way, you break it. If you break it, you buy it. Don't try this at home - or do, on something you're all right to stuff up."

Greyson anticipated a sassy comeback, but Trinity only waited as his basic and experimental poke failed as expected.

"Now, that lock downstairs was shite, so I could use one pin with its own leverage. That won't work up here - or down there in the near future - so I'll have to do some surgery. These pins won't be any good for hair when I'm done with them." Greyson set about folding one pin double, straightening another, bending its tip with some help from the keyhole. "What did you want to get in there for, anyhow?"

"I wanted to hide out for a bit. To give Clay a laugh when he came back from the bar and went looking for me."

"You got one from the bloke half asleep at the monitors when you asked him if this was the loo."

"The helpless act." Trinity shrugged. "Got to love a classic, especially when it works better than it has any real right to."

Greyson wondered if he had fallen for something similar as he passed Trinity his makeshift tools for inspection. "Exhibit A - the pick. Exhibit B - the torsion wrench. A lock is made of pins that need to sit at a certain height. That's what a key is cut for. Since we're going one by one, we have to do this in the right order. And we have to keep the pressure on so the pins stay up as we poke them."

"Is that all?"

"The devil's in the details. Turn the wrench too hard, you jam the lock. Not enough, and it all falls down before you get going. That's why you start small on cheap shite. So, if you'll hand those back to me." Greyson took the pins. "Exhibit C - the demonstration."

Trinity leaned on the wall for a leisurely minute as Greyson narrated his work. A measured turn of the torsion wrench, upward pokes to find the stiffest pin remaining. Raising that pin until it subtly clicked into place - repeating the process until the lock unlatched to a smattering of applause.

"That almost sounded too easy."

"It is if you're me. If you're not, not so much." Greyson opened the door, stood aside to let Trinity through to locate the handbag he was starting to think she had left behind in hopes of this little demonstration. "Which is only natural - after all, it is my job."

"How did you get into getting into things like that?"

"Necessity, for the most part. Like any other career, except mine wasn't always legal."

"That must have been exciting."

"More like exhausting." Greyson's words weighed under memories of the threat of arrest looming over every footstep, the eternity between word of jobs that might never materialize, the hated part of him that craved all of such uncertainty and its razor glide along his nerves. "And it slammed doors in my face that I'm not sure I'll ever get open."

Trinity's voice softened. "You seem all right now, at least from what I've heard."

"I guess I am. What about you? Anything else you need me to crack open?"

"Perhaps a beer for a job well done if it's not too early for that. I'm going down to the library, going for a bit of reading."

"So some other sort of trouble. Got it."

Trinity laughed. "The only trouble here is getting my hands on the Braille books I'm after. Sometimes I can find audio, but not often enough. And sometimes it's nicer to feel the words than to listen."

Greyson remembered a similar comment from Redd about the utilitarian feel of his tablet as opposed to the textured weight of leather and rag paper, the satin smoothness of ribbon sewn in for a marker. "I can see that."

"Then I'll see myself down, and you at the big show."

Greyson watched Trinity leave, gliding down step by step with the slightest taps of her cane as if she almost had the staircase memorized. So maybe that memory had conveniently lapsed to bring about a show of his own. It was a chance to flaunt his skills, do a bit of improv. A distraction from a certain prize in his room that had sat in his mind since last night and was drawing him back into its orbit.

And staring at him from the dresser where cleaning staff had set it front and center like an exhibit. The papier mache egg was indeed crafted with exquisite care, sanded smooth and neatly painted and embellished with precise swirls of metallic foil. From the stage distance of the doorway, it briefly passed as real.

Greyson could have left his card as with everything else, left the egg behind. Maybe he had taken it with him out of artistic appreciation. Or as a remnant of that escapade, a souvenir to hold onto - though of course he would rather be holding onto Redd. Whose thigh continued to tempt him under every table they shared, as did his equally firm arse when he reached up for that money box - and who Greyson sensed was only casual when it came to fashion, and wanted more than a bit of fuckery that might very well lead to nothing.

And who was busy with his own work and thus not here to take the damned egg away and bin it, or burn it with the filigreed brass lighter Greyson carried in case of need to impress someone with a quick flick. To stop Greyson from picking it up and shaking it, hearing nothing as before but doubting that was all. From spotting its lengthwise seam, just like the original, and cutting it with his penknife to reveal a verse on the inner shell.

> It keeps you roundly in its thrall  
>  Like diamonds born of coal  
>  Will Easter's bounty tempt a fall  
>  Back down the rabbit hole?

* * *

"We'll start out light and breezy. Cheerful." Tequila took a sip from her water glass as she paced a slow circle by the piano. "A puff pastry sort of appetizer, if you catch my drift."

Redd nodded, letting Tequila freely sketch the shape of her performance. He knew a good song list when he heard one, its smooth and engaging flow. But Tequila knew her particulars of tone and mood and tempo, the emotional trajectory through which to lead her audience. She was the voice, Redd the sounding board, quietly encouraging her to think it all through aloud.

"Then we can punch it up some, turn up the heat a little - dancing cheek to cheek and all. Or maybe we ought to lead in more, save that one for the middle -" Tequila caught Redd staring off into a space where the edge of his gaze caught the doorway into the hall. "Are you still with me, Mr. Redd?"

"Of course. I'm listening. I wasn't sure what you wanted to hear from me - I'd rather not step on your toes." Redd swung sideways on the piano bench and waggled a polished wingtip, eliciting a smile. "Especially not with one of these."

Redd had also been deep in thoughts of his own. He had told Tequila that a visitor might be by, asked if she would mind an audience. She was all right with it as long as said audience was the same with spoiling the main event for themselves. Yet Greyson had not shown, not even to poke his head through the doorway and await a wave of invitation or dismissal. Perhaps he was listening nearby, unwilling to interrupt. Or perhaps he was still stuck on that damn egg, the idea that there might be more to the game than Lucas' idea of a laugh. And if there was -

"I'd rather you feel free to speak up. It's your show, too, after all."

"Perhaps, but you're the star."

"If you must be putting it in those terms -" Tequila took on a grandiose air. "As the star, I insist that my pianist also get his chance to shine."

"Very well." Redd tipped an imaginary hat. "As the lady requests, a gentleman will oblige."

"That's the spirit I'm looking for. So - lay it on me. What do you want to play tonight?"

Redd started to sort through some favorite jazz standards, other American classics in line with the Gershwin and Porter and Ellington the two of them had been working on. The catalog was both endless and empty, flipping through his mind without landing on that perfect page. Redd swallowed, preparing for the logical next step of curation.

"I want to play a love song."

"You sure do, don't you? Is that what you were staring off into space about?"

Redd flushed, somewhat regretting their agreement to leave the masks off while rehearsing. "Perhaps."

"Seems more like a yes to me. Were you thinking of one song in particular? Or more like an idea of what you want it to sound like?"

"Something hopeful. Rich. Sensual." Redd played a flourish. "And a bit of a challenge for me."

"Just a bit?" Tequila teased.

"There's only so much I can pick up in a day."

"Very true, and we still have a few more to polish up. Can I ask who the song is for?"

"You rather just did."

"Don't be silly, Mr. Redd. You know what I mean. So." Tequila refilled her water glass from a pitcher on a silver tray. "Is it someone you're already with? Or someone you wish you were?"

"A friend, so some of both."

"Will that friend be joining us tonight?"

Redd looked off at the doorway, the empty hall beyond. "I hope so."

"There you go again with the silliness. If they're here, they'll be there, especially being that you are. Now, about your song. There's one coming into my mind just now. I've always been fond of the arrangement, and it seems a good fit for your style." Tequila pulled an Irving Berlin songbook from the stack atop the piano, set it up on the music stand. "Do you know this one?"

Redd did not recognize the name offhand, nor the intriguing shifts of chords, the seductive hook of melody, the lyrics enchanting in their simplicity. "No, but I'd like to."

"Easily done." Tequila smiled. "Ready whenever you are, Mr. Redd."

Redd set his tempo and began. He followed the music closely to start, easing into his own liberties as Tequila contemplated the depth of the ocean, the height of the sky, the distance of journey from here to a star. And her own travels, no doubt, on the wings of such burgeoning hope, touched as they might be with trepidation - and the shimmer of tears blinked back as the piano trailed up into a final scattering of quicksilver.

"I hope I'm not being presumptuous." Tequila met Redd's eyes, her own slightly smudged. "But from the way you were playing just now, I'm thinking you loved that as much as I do."

"I would bet on that, if the house is allowed such liberty. And if I may borrow your hope, I'm thinking I know why you chose it."

"Well, I am quite the ways from home." Tequila gazed off, wistful as she had been when singing of Kentucky the night before. "At least until I make myself a new one here."

"The Brutale was another world to me - in some ways, it still is. And I'm just over in Norwich. As for you, across the sea -" Redd left awkward words unspoken instead of trying to articulate the magnitude of difference.

"No sense in lying about it, not in here where it's just us and that piano. Sometimes it's not easy."

How Tequila had beamed on Lucas' arm after dinner in the great hall, greeting Redd with no trace of her American drawl. How pensive she looked just now as that melodic sashay fell under a shadow. This journey, this romance, this whirlwind of glamor - and all this world perhaps a stage with no green room beyond their musicians' respite.

"But it sure is a wonder, isn't it?" Tequila mused. "I'll make this work. I know I will. And I know it will damned well be worth it."

"The show must go on. Right?"

"Right as rain, Mr. Redd."

* * *

Greyson thought to swing by Redd and Tequila's rehearsal, distract himself with a sneak preview of the night's festivities. He seemed more likely to distract Redd instead, doubting he could manage a straight face or the same sort of story when asked what he was on about. Redd had been wary of this egg matter from the start, relieved that it seemed to be over. To learn that it was not, that the hunt was still on - a letdown and a concern, and Redd already had enough of his own business to worry about.

And this temptation was Greyson's regardless, his ball and chain to drag until he either freed himself or gave up any hope of doing so. He had shredded the papier mache egg, burned the scraps one by one, but the poem was seared into his head on first glance. As were its key words, dank and grimy arrows to that place where Lucas must know he had been trapped into surrender.

The basement.

Greyson went down to the library as if to absorb some of Redd's sense and caution from his habitual hangout. Trinity was squirreled away in a corner, poring over a rare collection of poetry and memoirs that she went on about in detail after their happenstance meeting and subsequent hello. Greyson picked out a collection for himself, that Byron where he had left his cards at Redd's bashful way of confirming that suspected fact of his nature. But the words flitted past his eyes unprocessed, and all he saw was staggering sums within savings and investments, snapshots of leisurely jaunts through distant cities and exotic landscapes, an odd consultancy taken for the fun of it when his hands and mind started to feel lazy. And, beneath it all, that plain white door near Lucas' dining room.

Trinity was the only other one in here, but she had turned her head toward Greyson while he was pondering a shelf of stage illusion blueprints some distance away. Greyson removed his shoes, shuddering at the chill of flagstone through dress socks. The bookcase door was silent as ever, as were the rooms beyond, and Greyson shivered once again at the idea that Lucas was purposefully staying out to entice him onward.

Greyson had taken note of the basement stairs without ever actually taking them. He had plenty to poke at in the Brutale proper, his share of regular feedback when the surveillance overhaul got underway. Its underbelly would have locks of its own, storage areas and maybe some passage outside. But those steps went down into a darkness that weighed in Greyson's stomach, eclipsing any prick of guilt he might have felt over their avoidance.

That weight came crawling back as Greyson unlocked the stairwell once again, and he took deep breaths to match the pace of his slow descent. Ghosts were bollocks, as were the monsters who lived behind doors and beneath beds, and he was well past the age of pissing himself at the thought of either. There was just this foundation, bog standard and boring. Just utility rooms and plumbing and electrical boxes, dust and cobwebs and mouse shit - and no one down here but housekeeping, easily avoided and far more fussed about their own work than a bit of casual trespassing, nowhere near the worst they must have seen on a weekend like this where brunch tailed right off into a swing band and the free flow of liquor.

Not that there was anyone to avoid in this warren of brick archways and bare bulbs, its rooms of gleaming steel and tile. The kitchen and wine cellar were deserted, the laundry room dark and idle. Music filtered from above in faint and rhythmic murmurs, so distant that Greyson might as well be fathoms underground. Alone with his torch, the cruel persistence of memory, and the demons egging him on - unfortunate as that phrase might be - through the steady creep of nausea.

Said phrase encouraged Greyson into the pantry after his scrutiny of storage got him nothing but household supplies and theatrical castoffs and enough dusty crates to tie up a junk picker for the next month and counting. There was a room with no entry, the bottom of Lucas' private wing, but Greyson thought to try his flash of inspiration first. After all, it did fit an established theme.

And then delivered in the form of a cartoned egg dyed green and painted gold. Unsurprisingly hollow, with small holes at either end - and a paper scrap among the shards when Greyson cracked it.

> Underfoot or overhead  
>  Or somewhere to the side  
>  Smudged in soot or dusky red  
>  Waiting to be pried

Greyson squinted at the poem, scratching his halo of remaining hair. Realizing, as the clock tower distantly struck four, that by where, it meant the entire basement, and by what -

"You bloody fucking berk."

* * *

Greyson paced the kitchen, wondering where he was supposed to start. Here, close enough to the dyed egg. Some hallway or storage area selected at random. Or the one room that had pricked him with familiarity when he passed it, unnerve beyond the discomfort of its steady hiss and simmering heat. Which, knowing Lucas, was exactly the place to look.

Greyson borrowed a crowbar from a tool chest, realizing that he was gripping it like a weapon. Looking absurd past the point of paranoia, though no one was around to see him. Unless they were, sneaking beneath the industrial hum of the boiler - and he jumped at the strange shadow it cast in the sweep of his torch.

With a determined heft of his crowbar, Greyson surveyed the brick walls. This was another furnace room, another mansion. Another party, another game of seek and sneak - and this time to be won.

Brick by brick, floor to just overhead. Torch and crowbar into questionable cracks, patient pokes and wiggles. Greyson thought to find a ladder, that his target - like that money box - might be placed within Redd's reach and out of his own. Instead he continued to comb the walls, pulse pounding under the temperature and noise and the growing sense that this stage of the hunt was made for him alone.

The loose brick was below a maze of copper pipes that Greyson instinctively flinched away from to avoid a trip to the burn unit. It was more easily pushed than pulled, and it clattered into an inky void. Greyson's torch revealed a narrow passage with a small metal door in its opposite wall, partially concealed by a dark textured heap with the slightest glimmer.

Coal.

Maybe this was a fluke, and the real clue was elsewhere. Maybe Greyson ought to check said elsewhere instead of finding himself a change of clothes from the dirty bin and a place to stash his own before squeezing through the grime of storage and then worse. Or go upstairs, to hell with it all, flip the bird at this torment for good - and the clock tower tolled, an hour later than expected. Just one from the show.

Greyson turned, hustling off to the laundry room. He was here. He had time. He would triumph.

* * *

Redd poured himself a glass of water from the tray in the green room of the grand music hall, sipped it carefully to avoid spotting his cravat. He should have waited a while longer instead of coming up here so early from fear of being late. Or brought the book he had picked out the night before, the memoirs of a Civil War bootlegger who seemed an archetypal kin to Tequila's uncle. Or something stronger to soothe his stage nerves, though it might have instead pushed them further toward illness.

A gentle knock, an affirmative response, and Tequila swept in, all satin and feathers and floral perfume. She had been suitably formal in her daytime sheath and simple updo. In opera gloves and lace collar, a strapless and flowing ball gown of grey and white and indigo, her hair in elaborate whorls above the musical splendor of her mask, she was poised to own that stage - or any other in the world.

"Well, look who went and got himself some fancy pants."

"My trousers, right?" Redd teased. "As opposed to what goes underneath them."

"Right." Tequila blushed through her makeup. "I didn't mean to get that personal."

"I didn't think you did."

"You do look nice, though. Very dapper, very you. You even did up your hair, didn't you?"

Indeed, Redd had smoothed and styled his undercut with a dab of pomade. He had switched out his khakis and red sweater vest for black dress slacks and a grey wool waistcoat, tied on a new silk cravat of royal blue and gold paisley. A treat for himself, a formal upgrade to his usual style, a match for his horns - and for a man who wore jewelry as a habit and full suits with the ease of jeans and a polo.

"Not as much as yours."

Tequila laughed. "From the way it chose to behave itself - which is to say it didn't - it was really much closer to wrestling."

"It's clear to me that you won."

"It's a new style - I really should have given it a dress rehearsal some time before tonight. How do you like it?"

"It's terrific. Dare I say, perfect."

"You're too kind as always, Mr. Redd. Truth be told, it's got a few extra hairpieces." Tequila patted a voluminous coil with her gloved hand. "I trust you'll keep my secret."

"Of course. Your wish for discretion is my command."

"Do you want me to do the same? With our song, that is."

"How do you mean?" Redd asked.

"I can dedicate it by name if you'd like, or to our special someones in general. Or I could keep all that between the two of us - our little secret." Tequila smiled. "What's your wish, Mr. Redd?"

Redd wished he could count on Greyson to show up from wherever he had seen fit to vanish. He had not been relaxing in the conservatory or gardens, at the evening buffet or Ace's show of flaming cocktails at the portable bar nearby, at a blackjack table taking reckless hits for a laugh and the chance for one better if he drew a low card or the croupier was in a mood to sneak him one. Only in the library, as Trinity had mentioned at dinner, and Redd's stomach sank with the thought of where he had gone on from there - and where he might still be for the foreseeable future.

"Let's go with the second option. Keep an air of mystery, although no one actually has to guess. Especially Lucas."

"He'd better know better by now," Tequila joked. "What about that friend of yours?"

"I think he'll have enough of an idea." If Greyson were even around to hear it, which Redd began to doubt as he sneaked a peek into the hall, at its steady influx of masks and cocktails and chatter. At the front row table that Clay and Trinity had claimed, accompanied not by that distinctive cap of metal but by a red queen and twinned faces of a jester, a conjoined illusion perhaps having come through the same looking glass.

"If you're as close as it sounds like from what you were telling me, I'm sure he will. How's the weather out there?"

"Crowded with a chance of music."

"Just a chance?" Tequila extended a theatrical hand. "We're going to make it rain, Mr. Redd."

"We will." Redd curled his fingers into hers, a gentle clasp of confidence. "The perfect storm."

The music hall dimmed, hushing an audience dotted with the low flicker of candles in hurricane glass. Brilliant white flooded the stage, and Lucas strode on with the grandiose aid of a walking stick. As he hoisted it like a ringmaster's baton, its handle gleamed in the footlights, a golden skull with eyes of ruby.

"Ladies and gentlemen, associates and miscreants." Lucas paused for laughter, encouraging it with a sweep of his stick. "Friends and fraudsters, sycophants and scoundrels. I couldn't have assembled a better crowd myself. Except I did - but I digress.

"Tonight, we are graced by the voice of a siren. A peerless artist. A true American beauty, and what an honor for us to host her. I introduce to you - Tequila Belle."

Tequila raised her chin and disappeared into a wave of applause.

"And her accompanist, in his respective debut on this stage - one of the Brutale's very own. A fine upstanding fellow, a croupier with more up his sleeve than mere card tricks." Lucas gestured toward the green room door. "Redd Rockridge."

Buoyed by his own warm welcome, Redd took a breath and stepped out. He seated himself at the grand piano, a bespoke and exquisite instrument normally kept under lock and key. Redd improvised an introduction, luxuriating in the precise action of pedals and keys, the rich and resonant tone, the silken glide of his fingers over genuine ebony and ivory. From the shadows of the audience came a supportive and brotherly holler and an unseen glass certainly raised along with it.

Redd trailed off into an expectant silence as Tequila drew herself up, waiting in all her grandeur. She struck up the proverbial band, and his toe began to tap. The tempo, the countdown - the plunge.

Luck was a lady that night as Redd and Tequila fell into the playful beat of their opener. They kicked up their heels beneath smiling blue skies, swung into scat and ragtime. Drew closer with a dash of spice, turned up the heat into a slow dance. Their dedication loomed as they eased into the languid luxury of a segue. When the applause died away just before it, Redd's ears continued to roar with the pounding of his heart.

"Thank you. Thank you all. You're such an incredible audience." As with her other stage patter, Tequila spoke with that formal accent she had cultivated as if from the golden age of the silver screen. "This next song is a real treat. It's a favorite of mine, and a gift from myself and Redd. Twos of hearts out there, you know who you are - and what perfect pairs you are to us both."

They had taken this number through just one smooth run as if to preserve its magic and to trust in the power of their own. Piano and voice laced together like their hands in the green room, strong and delicate, deep and soaring. Their rhythm leaned back and pulled ahead, anchored and leaped forward, flowing like the tides of the ocean and the zephyr's flight above. As Tequila rose up into her final phrase, Redd braced himself for the thrill of her highest soprano. Instead she kept her measured restraint as if her eyes were, like his, beginning to well - more so as his sidelong glance into the audience revealed no telltale gleam of plate or padlock.

The whirlwind of applause swept them onward into levity, a balancing touch of gravity, an original of Tequila's that Redd had taken for a Tin Pan Alley classic when she first sang it for him. Then began their denouement, a gentle descent to a finale that Tequila insisted on keeping a secret. Redd only knew that he would know it well enough. At first, a nagging concern - and now an appreciation of mystique, and more so their deepening trust.

And Redd knew what Tequila would sing as the drawl crept back into her voice. As she offered her regrets about this time to say good night, even before she spoke the same words of introduction given to him in private.

"This is a song I've loved since I was a little girl, a piece of home I keep with me. My old home, that is, as I settle into the new." Tequila raised a beckoning hand. "Friends and neighbors and whatever else Lucas saw fit to call you, will you all join me in this fond farewell?"

The audience had played along when Tequila tossed them an invitation, joining in the chorus and clapping to some approximation of the beat. Now they sat enraptured at her one last song for the old Kentucky home as her melody floated over spare and reverent chords. As Tequila sang of days going by like a shadow over the heart, and Redd's own swelled with her pure and nascent optimism. As she hit the final refrain high, a lady entreating herself to weep no more, filling the room with her piercing vibrato.

In its wake, shocked silence - and a standing and thunderous ovation. A cacophony of congratulations and chatter, mingling and handshaking and exuberant praise. Tequila beamed with sheer and honest relief, twin tracks of eye makeup streaking into her blush.

Greyson stepped out of the storm with the remnants of a cocktail, resplendent in grey tails and purple. His metal mask gleamed in the candlelight, his eyes with some odd glint below their usual sparkle.

"Good show." A hand clasped on Redd's elbow, a jerked nod vaguely down the hall. "Let's roll."

* * *

Redd allowed Greyson to hustle him out of the music hall, cutting through the discordant tides of egress and convergence around the stage where Tequila and Lucas were entertaining their circle of admirers. Greyson did not speak as he pulled them both into the dark and moonlit practice room, then to a tufted leather sofa tucked away in the corner. Still his abrupt words echoed within that silence, saying it all well enough as he toyed with the dregs of his drink. Greyson had been on the hunt. He had found another sign, another clue - perhaps even his prey itself.

"You know what I was up to." Greyson drained his glass with a slow pull as if reading Redd's mind or just the somber set of his mouth. "I know you're not happy about it."

Redd stayed quiet in agreement. Greyson spoke with the weight of nerves rather than the excitement of discovery, and there was no sense in piling onto that any further.

"I thought it was over, same as you. Just a laugh from Lucas, right? That egg we found - it had a clue inside. I tried to distract myself, put it behind me. I gave in. I kept looking. I'm sorry."

"I suppose I should be disappointed." Redd met Greyson's eyes, noticing a regret that deepened with his next words. "But I can't say I'm surprised."

"Of course you're not. Once a thief, always a thief." Greyson fiddled with a latch on his mask and removed it, setting it next to his empty glass on the low table in front of them. "No matter how bloody much I try to pretend otherwise."

"That's not what I was thinking." Perhaps slightly, much as Redd hated to admit it, but not primarily by any means. Still Greyson eyed him with skepticism as if seeing right through him once more, even before he unmasked himself as well. "You said it yourself. That egg is worth millions. If it is here, and it is yours, guaranteed free and clear - that's one hell of a new life for you."

"Some guarantee, knowing the source. You should see what that bastard dangled in front of me. Safes stuffed with cash. Account numbers left out like phone numbers. A blue diamond ring, for fuck's sake. Talk about a fortune."

Redd knew the unsavory sorts Lucas kept close and to his advantage on some invisible lead, having dealt for them countless more times than he cared to. Perhaps Greyson had also been brought on as more of a pawn than a business partner. "And a trap."

"Maybe the egg is different. Maybe it really is the gift Lucas told me it was. But no matter what he says, what I get him to sign, I'll never know for sure." Greyson looked contemplative. "What kind of life would that be with that hanging over our heads?"

"Our?" Redd blurted before thinking to moderate his tone.

"We're partners, remember?" Greyson gave Redd a nudge. "At least I'm hoping that's true even though I went rogue for a bit."

"You're here now, so it is."

"Good, because I have a little something to show you."

Greyson pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, placed it on the table. He made no move to open it, no gesture for Redd to do the same. Instead he regarded it with the weariness of the saddest brand of gambler, driven to just one more round while sinking deeper into the destitution to which they had long since resigned themselves.

"This is the next clue. Unopened. Unread. I'm no man of faith, but I'm praying you believe that."

Redd nodded, as the same had been true of the first.

"I had to get my hands dirty for this one - no, not like that. Just poking around in some coal. If it's not the last, it's damn close." Greyson took a heavy breath. "But for me, it might as well be."

Before Redd could ask or guess after the details, Greyson produced an ornate brass lighter. He set the paper ablaze, dropping it into his glass. His eyes closed with a sigh as his hypothetical fortune began to go up in smoke. They opened after a beat to witness the burning, lidded in that dim and flickering glow.

"You're sure about this?" Redd asked although the paper was collapsing to embers.

"What would you have done with it?"

Redd smiled with his own contentment, remembering how he had told Greyson to do just that with the first. "Did you have to ask?"

They watched the clue blacken and curl, gutter out into smoking ash. Perhaps the egg was indeed out there, still in Lucas' hands, and another envelope would then find its way into Greyson's. But as Greyson pondered the remains of this game, elbows casually propped on knees, Redd had the idea he would take flame to paper once more - winning by forfeit again.

"Bloody Lucas."

Redd echoed Greyson's amusement. "Bloody Lucas."

"What a ride, though, eh? It really was pretty damn clever."

"The clue that wasn't."

"The one that fell down. Just like me, falling for this rot." Greyson gave a rueful laugh. "And almost getting myself broken."

"I would catch you."

"Really?"

"You're doubting me?" Redd teased back. "I could lift you for a warmup."

"I'm sure you could. That's not what I'm on about."

"Then what is?"

Greyson sat up and edged close, pensive in the silver light filtering between velvet curtains. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky.

"I thought you already did."

Redd laid a hand on Greyson's neck, felt the hammer of his pulse. Gazed into his wide and trusting eyes, inhaled the softness of lavender cologne over the deeper scent of his skin. Leaned in as Greyson reached for him in kind, into a kiss they savored in all of its tender patience.

"You were serious about that, weren't you?" Greyson breathed.

Redd kissed him again, a longer and firmer agreement to whatever else of relevance he had in mind.

"That song. That dedication. I never knew I meant that much."

"If that's all right." Redd drew back momentarily, fearing he had taken a step too far. "Is it?"

Greyson grabbed hold of Redd's collar with both hands. He pulled himself in, whispering a tease against his mouth as he captured it. "Take a wild bloody guess."

Their lips met again and again, parting to taste the depth of their insistence. Redd slid under Greyson's jacket as he went wandering up front, groping his chest through the twin layers of waistcoat and dress shirt. Scrambling at placketed buttons, groaning along with Redd at the stiffening peaks of his nipples.

"Greyson."

Greyson only paused to shrug off his tailcoat before putting his hands back to work and his mouth along with them, precluding any more stolen scraps of chatter.

"What if someone comes in here?" Redd managed when let up for air.

"The party's downstairs."

"Not for us. So perhaps not for everyone."

Greyson murmured impishly into Redd's ear as he caught it for a nibble. "Then we'll give them a show."

Redd found himself thrilling at the idea as he fumbled at buttons and bow tie himself, as Greyson cast off his cravat and replaced it with the delicious sting of a bite that it would cover in the morning. As his waistcoat came open and his shirt untucked, and the breeze on his bare stripe of stomach only served to stoke the rising heat below. Which Greyson reciprocated as he pushed Redd back on the sofa, hands and hips prodding him with equal hunger.

"This much of a show?" Redd gasped as Greyson played over the light trail of hair below his navel, teasing along his waistband.

Greyson stopped and looked over them both, his disheveled garments revealing a dark wedge of chest. "Maybe not right here."

"Then where?"

Greyson dismounted and masked up. He put his tailcoat back on and pocketed his bow tie, buttoning up the rest as he strode out of the room. Redd went to call out, to ask Greyson to wait, to give him a few to calm down and reassemble. Before the words left him, he felt another sort of lump in his trousers.

A room key.


	6. Down the Treasure Trail

Redd first intended to go as he was, hot on the heels of that rumpled fervor. Temptation curled in his stomach at the thought of Greyson having some time to prepare, waiting in his suit or loungewear or nothing at all. Redd detoured back to his room past a kabuki fox, a disco ball in a silver froth of gown, a mermaid clutching a pirate too busy swaying after her land legs to stare at shirt tails still untucked and belatedly forgotten. Similar disregard would likely be given to the excitement betrayed by Redd's new silk pajamas of navy stripe. Still Redd decided on the lesser indignity of his coverup, a quilted dressing gown from the wardrobe that wrapped his chest halfway and barely reached his knees.

Redd fumbled Greyson's key into its lock, breath catching in his throat as the latch clicked open. Perhaps this was the beginning he dreamed of, perhaps just another game for this weekend and a crapshoot as to whether it would nonetheless be worthwhile. Or perhaps Redd had already decided it was, well before he opened the door to muted lighting and the soft strains of Liszt. To Greyson, robed in a bold floral silk print of gold and orange and brown, beckoning from his sprawl on the plush duvet.

Redd shut the door behind him, swallowing hard before he turned back around. His most recent such tryst was with a uni friend and erstwhile partner staying over in Norwich on holiday a few years back, sneaking time together while Clay was off at work or trolleyed enough to sleep through the bedsprings. The deed had never involved this much privacy or ceremony or luxury. Or anyone with the glamorous audacity of Greyson, who sat up and slipped out of his robe to reveal matching trousers and the lean muscularity of his torso.

"Your turn."

Greyson watched with amusement as Redd worked at his own sash, which he had accidentally tied into a square knot, and dropped his dressing gown into a puddle. His eyes fell in kind to what the gown had concealed, widening with a salacious gleam as Redd felt his flush deepen to scarlet.

"You look rather nervous for someone so happy to see me."

"It's been a while. Let's just say that. I hope this is all right." Redd got into bed, made himself comfortable on the pile of pillows Greyson was also resting against. "I hope I'll be all right."

"For what it's worth, you don't kiss like a schoolboy. I'm sure you don't fuck like one, either."

The bluntness of that word burst like a depth charge as Redd started to think of what all it might entail. How much he had experienced with his few and rather timid partners, or how relatively little - and, perhaps as implied with that brush of knee at breakfast, what he was about to learn.

"In any case, I think we should kiss first."

Greyson drew close, filling Redd's vision as he reached to cup his cheek. "You should stop thinking so much."

In the practice room, the two of them had kissed with a near desperate urgency. Now they made space to breathe and explore, to map brows and cheekbones and the regal distinction of noses. To nip at earlobes with gentle teeth, to revel in the rasp of full beard and nighttime stubble. In the opening of Redd's pajama shirt, button by patient button, as he trailed light fingers over a chest already bared to his touch. From nipples to navel and the rough curls of hair leading down, murmuring with delight as Greyson teased him in kind, and stiffening ever more below the waist as they stayed so deliberately above.

Greyson gave Redd a playful shove, pushing him back onto pillows where he was all too pleased to land. His lips curved into a smirk as he climbed on top, trousers slung dangerously low and leaving little to the imagination through the feather weight of their fabric.

"Now. You'll have to remind me where we were."

Between the hunger in Greyson's eyes and the musk of his skin, the close heat of his body and likewise prod of his hardness, Redd thought he would soon need a reminder of his own name.

"Here?" A kiss, chaste and sweet. "Here?" Lips brushed on corded neck, clamping into the suction of a bite. "Or maybe more like - here?" This last was whispered into the muscled valley of Redd's chest as a hand sneaked down for a long and languid stroke over tented silk, eliciting an instinctive twitch and a chuckle in response.

Greyson continued to taunt Redd as he brushed his way south, trailing kisses behind the coarse thrill of his beard. He hooked fingers into Redd's waistband, gazed up with a keen smile. Then back down with an illusionist's anticipation, savoring that final moment of discretion before the big reveal. Redd rather expected Greyson to whisk his trousers away like the cloth over a climactic set piece. Instead he slid them off with a nearly reverent patience, assisted by a lifting of hips and a quick reach to free their hangup. Which Greyson studied for a long and exposed moment as he settled between Redd's knees, taking it all in with his eyes before hand and mouth followed suit.

Redd sank back into the pillows, arching into this pleasure as his last scraps of reserve melted into its ardor. Surrendering to the steady rhythm of nimble fingers and practiced tongue, to manicured nails raked over the flex of his thigh to the secret sensitivity behind his knee. To a bolder exploration further back, pausing when Redd jolted with surprise at this strange yet welcome sensation. Then pressing slowly inside after his strangled groan of permission, opening him like a lock with the finesse of a master.

Sheathed and stretched, engulfed and full, Redd clenched the duvet as the friction wound deeper and tighter. Up and up along with the wanton rise of his hips, brimming fast toward the near threat of overflow. Fueling anticipatory breaths as Greyson sped up - and a near curse of frustration when he withdrew with a wicked grin.

"Let me guess," Redd managed through the confoundment of mental fog and unreleased pressure. "My turn?"

"Your choice."

"What?"

"Jam roll or corn on the cob?"

Redd wondered if he had misunderstood before recalling one such term from when he heard Greyson grumble it within the context of an insult.

Greyson rolled over and reached into the nightstand, presented supplies with a flourish. "Arse or cock. What's your pleasure?"

"Mine or yours?" Then realized as an unneeded question, but Redd was hardly in a state to care.

"Either way."

So Greyson had meant his tawdry term in its most literal sense, whose pleasures Redd had imagined but never found the nerve to pursue. But here, tonight, so smartly provoked into readiness to be taken in full - or to sink into a tighter heat, and all of its trust -

"Mine. In yours. If that's all right."

"You can say it, you know." Greyson chuckled. "And if it weren't, I wouldn't have asked."

"Do you want me to say it?"

"I want you to do it. But yes, that too."

"If you insist." Redd took a breath, almost as shy about this usage of a rarely mumbled grievance as his first time at the act itself. "I would very much like to fuck you. If that's all right."

"I just said it was."

"Right. Good. Absolutely." Redd pushed back the covers to the foot of the bed. "Shall we?"

Greyson bared himself and stretched out on his back, inviting Redd to observe preparations as he made his own. Then to lend a hand, cautious into that snug slicked intimacy although Greyson insisted he was not about to be broken. Redd began to relinquish the fear of his own strength as Greyson relaxed and asked for more with a murmur of anticipation for the fulfillment soon to follow. Still he eased himself in with some hesitance until an impatient groan emboldened him toward a slow cadence of thrusts that Greyson took with a gasp as if bringing the breath back into his body along with them.

"Still all right? Should I stop?"

"Thinking so much?" Greyson's eyes were lidded, his voice a husky whisper. "Yes."

Redd did as directed and let instinct take over, driving him deeper and harder as Greyson bucked his hips to meet him. As he cursed to the rhythm of the bedsprings and the strokes of his own hand, and Redd caught the passion of those words in time to leave his of concern unspoken. As the tide began to surge, sweeping Redd under as he fought to hold it back, and Greyson plunged into his wake with a great and consuming shudder that sent them both crashing down undone.

They burrowed into the covers, face to face and casually intertwining. When words came back to Redd through the cooling of his euphoria, he thought to ask how it was, how he did, if he had somehow overdone it. The answers were clear enough in the blissful repose of Greyson's dark eyes and sensual mouth, the sheen of his sweat in the low golden light, the squeeze of his hand and play of toes on Redd's shin.

"You don't look so nervous any more."

"I wonder why that could be," Redd teased.

"One of life's great mysteries, eh?"

"A riddle for the ages."

"I'd put my mind to that again."

Redd reached down, taking gentle hold of Greyson for the first time. "Don't you mean your head?"

Greyson smiled, shaking the one he typically thought with. "You got me. Literally. Can't say I'm up for another round just yet, though."

"Do you think you will be?"

"Of course. We've got all night, don't we?"

As Greyson turned to nestle against him, contentedly pressing himself back into a reflexive stir of appreciation, Redd began to think they just might have more.

* * *

Greyson had expected to wake at his usual time and get himself presentable, showered and groomed and dressed in the cream and gold ensemble he had in mind for this last morning of the weekend. Instead he opened bleary eyes to Redd propped up beside him, reading a book from the nightstand in a shaft of sunlight through parted velvet drapes. Redd's undercut was tousled and damp, his sculpted chest bare, his studious face flushing when he caught similarly attentive eyes on the thick contours of his muscles. He smelled faintly of sandalwood, mentioning its source with some apology as Greyson leaned in with a curious nose and no intention of asking for one.

"First the covers, then my soap, now my reading material." Greyson smiled. "And here I thought I was the thief."

"I thought you were retired. Someone has to pick up where you left off."

"True, true, and I would have been slacking on the job anyhow. I slept long enough, didn't I?"

"And snored enough."

"I snore?" Greyson asked with some embarrassment.

"No worse than Clay. Granted, he'd drown out a lorry when he gets going."

Greyson snorted, thinking he looked the type. Hopefully Clay had been first in line for that and not left much over for Redd.

"It's fine. You're fine. I only meant to say that you were far enough under to need a good lie-in."

Greyson curled up to Redd, stroking his thigh through the silk of pajama trousers. "And whose fault would that be, eh?"

"You started it."

"You finished it. And how."

Redd lowered the biography of the Great Belzoni - strongman, showman, shameless looter of Egyptian artifacts, still somewhat of an idol - as Greyson's touch sneaked up to trace over him. "Are you thinking to start something else?"

"I'm thinking I could get used to this."

"You already seem to know it very well."

Greyson chuckled, savoring that first swell of response. "All of this, I mean. Not just your -"

Redd set the book aside, drawing Greyson into a kiss that melted the last of his concerns about how he tasted before a good brushing. Greyson was normally first up and first to leave, ending such nights at the arm's length agreed to by those he trusted to keep them on similar terms. With Redd, he had known he would stay, even before that love song he found himself hoping to be meant as more than a general wish for affection. But he was still a sleepy mess, and maybe somewhat of a smelly one at that - and here was Redd, offering him the best sort of good morning like he was freshly scented in silk.

"All of what, then?" Redd teased. "That time when I rolled over and elbowed you in a bad spot? Or when I left you cold in the middle of the night?"

"It's no problem. I've had enough of that otherwise - I can deal without a blanket."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was mutual." A shrug. "Friendly fun, over and done."

Redd's brow wrinkled as if he wanted to ask if it really was.

"It is. I mean that. It's been a while for me, too." Greyson took Redd's hand with a heartfelt squeeze. "And it's never been this much of an experience."

"Really?"

"Really. I don't let just anyone see me like this." Greyson paused, deciding on a subtler term for the calm of morning. "Or do me like that, for that matter."

"Neither do I. You were my first. For that, I mean."

So that explained the tremble in Redd's probing fingers, the awe in his eyes at that first decisive push, the depth of their worry as Greyson breathed into the elation of his fullness. His slow and patient rocking until he got up the nerve to unchain the power of his muscled arse, pounding Greyson back into the pillows and clear into spangled orbit. Losing himself in the moment, his face alive with the flexion of ardor Greyson had stretched out on his back to share with him, and that he normally lay on his stomach to hide.

"It just hadn't ever come up." Redd smiled at his own double entendre. "I suppose I was waiting for the right time, the right person. Then here - with you - this weekend -"

"Hell of a party, eh?"

"That, and a hell of a partner. If you're still on for that, of course."

Greyson searched the depths of those hopeful blue eyes that saw the best in him and looked over his failures with more sympathy than he ever deserved. In them he saw an evening at the London symphony, a suite at the Savoy for afterward, a hired tuxedo halfway undone in the elevator upstairs. Another costume ball, a barmy soiree thrown by a friend of a business partner of an associate, where Redd's ram horns might be taunted into the devil's upon a detour into the guest rooms. Quiet nights in the flat, Redd with a deep and exquisite book and Greyson with some biaxial bellend of a lock, working to classical or chillout or the simple rhythm of turning pages and tinging metal. Fitting together, just as they were.

"You always gave me a chance. Always, no matter what tosh I was going after. Your chip tray. That bloody egg."

"That first one was part of your job."

"You didn't have to invite me to play. Or call me a gentleman while you were at it."

"What can I say?" Redd shrugged. "I call it as I see it."

"You do, don't you? And you saw who I want so damn much to be." Greyson looked down. "Not the bastard I might not ever be rid of."

"If that's who was in charge, you'd already be gone. As you were before."

"Much before."

"A good long while, right?"

Greyson crawled onto Redd and straddled him, bare arse on striped silk, drawing in to speak against lips already parted to meet his. "Long enough to know I'd rather give this all a chance instead."

And Greyson gave himself over as Redd flipped him flat on his back with a broadening grin, pinning him to the mattress with the full weight of his body. Grazing his way down with soft kisses and slight stubble, swallowing Greyson's unsaid objections of being unkempt and unshowered and already running late to brunch.

* * *

Greyson had agreed to meet Redd back at his room when he was all put together and ready to go. He did so of his own devices, unlocking the door to Redd buttoning up his grey waistcoat with a wry yet appreciative shake of the head.

"You could have just knocked, you know."

"And let some rubbish lock get in my way like that? I have a reputation to maintain."

"As a showoff?"

"That too." Greyson presented his instruments of choice. "Which is why I used these instead of my usual."

"Hairpins." Redd snorted. "Should I even ask?"

"Go right ahead - there's a story behind that. Last night didn't exactly give me much chance to tell you."

"Let me guess. Trinity."

"Who else? She asked for a little demo when I got her back into her room, which I'd bet damn good money she locked up on purpose." Greyson thought back to the tale of how she got together with Clay after Redd caught her counting cards at his table, relayed by the three of them over a free flow of laughter and liquor alike. "I'm starting to get the idea that she's known for this sort of thing."

"Speaking of reputations and all." Redd checked himself in the mirror, touching the purple marks on the pale ivory of his neck. Drained as he was from earlier, Greyson thrilled at their memory anyhow. "Ours is about to get interesting."

"About to? We disappeared on the biggest night of the weekend. Those dots could be connected from space."

"As could mine." Redd rifled through a packing cube of cravats - his analog to the selection of suits Greyson had hauled with him - and held up two for a vote. "Black and white, or burgundy? Sorry to say I don't have any gold."

"Go with the first. We'll coordinate in monochrome."

"And that's why you're the style expert." Redd shrugged. "I just call it good when my clothes aren't out to strangle me."

"They suit you well, and fit you even better." Greyson playfully grabbed Redd's arse, firm and tight in his trousers, while he was tying on his geometric swirls over the pattern of last night's escapade. "Though I bet they would go best on the floor."

Redd stopped that hand as it sneaked around toward a different target. "I thought you didn't want to miss brunch."

"I could eat here. You already did, after all."

"In for a nibble, in for a bite?"

Greyson raised a suggestive brow. "Should I take that literally next time?"

Redd flushed. "Perhaps carefully."

* * *

Greyson had a streak of lone wolf envy at the stylish couples who shone at parties, their synergy of magnetism that his finest swagger could never match by itself. Lucas and Tequila, who played the diva to his ringmaster despite a modesty betrayed by her slipping accent and the tracks of her tears. Some red and gold pair that jumped on a table after the show to make tag team noise about taking over the theater downstairs. Clay and Trinity, even - he stood tall alongside her sassy glamor with a thickset sort of dignity and no trace of the usual scowl.

As he and Redd strolled into the great hall, hands linked with an easy warmth, Greyson started to think they could be such a twosome themselves. Redd got eyes for being the tallest man in the room, Greyson the most stylishly dressed, but those were more so glances as they passed into peripheral vision. Now Greyson felt them both being watched, followed with intrigue - and from the pride in Redd's face, he saw the same as well.

As did Clay, at their group's usual table next to the view into the conservatory, turning to Trinity with some remark too distant to hear. He must have known well before this, as Greyson knew himself from that attitude shift on their first happenstance of the weekend. But the romantic interest had been just that and the rest undetermined, as was Clay's response to its reaching a logical conclusion. From his appreciative smirk, said conclusion seemed to be all right enough by him, as if Redd's happiness beat out any leftover suspicion from those rough early days on the job.

"Well, well, well. Look who's fashionably late." Clay looked suspicious as if guessing Redd's ulterior motive for a cravat. "Never thought you'd be so formal this early, bruv."

"Thank Grey for that - or blame him, if you will." A hasty addendum - "He helped me dress."

Trinity piped up. "As opposed to the other way around?"

Leaning back with a new sort of satisfaction, Redd started to peel a banana from the fruit bowl on the table. "You're rather late to that particular show."

"I hadn't realized that was public."

"Invite only, sad to say," Greyson added. "With a very intimate audience."

"So, in other words." Trinity took a sip of tea. "Short on guests, long on -"

Clay managed to swallow his coffee before Redd's deliberate bite of banana could make him spew it. "You can stop any time you want, you know."

"Why?" Greyson asked. "Having too much fun already?"

"You all are. On me."

"But isn't that the best type?" Trinity teased.

"Not out here."

"Why not?" Trinity suggestively stroked her cane. "I don't see any problem."

Greyson and Redd went up to the buffet, leaving Trinity to smile as Clay sputtered. Redd looked over the full selection before helping himself, and he filled half his plate with vegetables and salad greens to start. He eyed a lone turnover as if feeling bad about taking the very last, snorting with some appreciation as Greyson put it on his plate for him.

"Rose petal jam." Greyson contemplated the pink glass jar and its calligraphed label. "I wonder what I could do with this."

"Put it on a scone?" Redd went about preparing one for himself. "Sounds good to me."

"Or something else." Greyson leaned in for a close whisper. "Somewhere I could lick it off very slowly."

Redd began to turn the color of the condiment, clearly aware that Greyson wasn't referring to his fingers.

"That's right. Spread it on nice and thick. Add a bit of cream - or a lot, if you will. Don't mind getting sticky. That's half the fun."

"What's the other half? Running your mouth?"

"More so my tongue, but close enough."

"You know, for once I didn't walk into that with my eyes closed." Redd held up his scone, made as if to eat it whole. "I opened wide."

Greyson let Redd have that last word as they sat back down with their plates, a reward of sorts for this fresh appreciation of racy mischief that everyone was cut off at the waist well enough for him to have some more fun with. His left hand slipped under the table as he ate with his right, met with a squeeze before Redd returned to taking neat forkfuls of salad. And then onward to Redd's thigh, inching up as his breath hitched between bites. As Greyson closed in on the prize, and Redd made some amusedly indignant noise but no move to stop this -

"I heard that. All of it. Very well, you know."

Greyson flinched, bracing himself for Trinity to give away the game before it properly got going.

"The thumping. The grunting. The creaking of wood under pressure." Then, as Greyson nearly did just that at the idea of how much else Trinity had caught - "And you almost choking on your drink."

"When that silly sod almost choked the bloke he was getting into it with." Clay snorted. "I was about to go on up there and break it up."

"Break what up?" Greyson asked with some relief as Redd seemed to be deciding whether he really wanted to know.

"The show last night. The other one. Some fuckery in the theater."

Trinity smirked at Greyson and Redd, who seemed to thrill a bit as she went on. "As opposed to whichever of your bedrooms."

Clay continued as if refusing to board that train of thought. "It was a talent show. Or a pissing contest. Same difference, really, so of course it turned into a fight club."

"Well, most everyone onstage was pissed. And in various states of undress."

"Ugh. Don't remind me about that when it's still too early to drink."

Redd raised an eyebrow. "That's a new one for you, bruv. But a very good one."

"I've got to take care of myself sometime, right?"

"Would you like some of these sprouts, then?"

"Let's not go that far."

Clay and Trinity went on about how the theater spectacle had done just that and kept on digging, and she almost made Redd laugh his food the wrong way with taunts about the dangling knobs and wrinkled bollocks Clay was refusing to describe in sufficiently excruciating detail. Greyson flashed back to a stodgy affair where some tosser from Glasgow called Taps Aff just for shites, and he turned around to an assortment of thrown blouses and dresses shed like snakeskin. If only Redd could be coaxed up onstage in his mask and pants and nothing else - or even less - and Greyson smiled broadly enough at the thought that he covered it up with a crack at some grizzled hangover of a chess rook shuffling around in little more than the same.

"What would we do for something like that? Sounds like my card tricks would be a bust." Redd gave a rueful laugh. "As would my jokes, but that's always."

"An act of escapism." Greyson placed a reflexive hand on the waistcoat pocket where he kept his ring of picks. "Lock me up. Watch me work my way out."

"Or not, which might be more entertaining." Trinity smiled. "Especially if Redd gets involved."

Redd jumped in, cheeky despite his embarrassment. "An act of voyeurism, then."

Clay made a disgusted sort of scoff. "Good luck getting me to watch that, let alone tell it. No offense and all, bruv."

"Oh, what a pity." Trinity neatly closed her lips around a grape. "I was hoping for the full blow by blow."

"I was hoping I wouldn't lose my appetite before I got done eating."

"So I take it you're not up for dessert?"

Redd was, and he went up to the buffet with Trinity when it was clear she meant that literally. Clay watched them stroll out to the gardens, pastries in hand, as Greyson worked through the last of his fruit salad, keeping his mouth busy as an excuse not to speak. A cover for his end of a shared silence that eventually began to unwind the tension left by the absence of their partners, and that Clay was the first to break.

"Some party, huh?"

"You can say that again."

"Yeah, might as well." Clay cracked a smile. "This place really is its own bonkers little world."

"Indeed. It will be good to get back to the outside one, though."

"Back to London, then?"

Greyson jumped at the change of plans he had been kicking around all morning, funny as it was to be telling Clay first. "To Norwich, at least for a few. I have some time between jobs, and I've never actually spent any there."

"I'm guessing you didn't have any reason to."

"I do now."

"Yeah. You do." Clay swallowed as if working up his nerve. "And you've got a place to stay, too."

Greyson took a moment to parse that, thinking he had misheard. "You don't have to do that. I can get a hotel. I can -"

"You can make yourself at home, mate."

"I'm not going to be a bother?"

"I'm not going to be around much this week, at least not when Redd is. And when I am -" Clay made some sound of gruff amusement. "If I hear anything, I'll pretend I didn't."

Greyson smiled. "Deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love redemption, self-actualization, and professional competence, and I thought that all fit these two very well. I wanted to explore a reformed interpretation of Greyson - struggling with old habits as he works to become a better man - who Redd could wholeheartedly fall in love with. I also thought to examine the situational challenges of Redd's polite reserve, his secret yearnings that he needed the chance and initiative to pursue. And of course I had to put the Sexy in the Brutale because why the hell not?
> 
> For a more canon-compliant and angsty take - yet still satisfyingly optimistic for its time frame and portrayals of the characters - please read the [Keys and Locks](https://archiveofourown.org/series/856444) series by [Nikkusama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikkusama). She has also been an invaluable Britpicker and idea bouncer throughout this story.


End file.
